Quintessential State of Dreaming
by hollyandthediamonds
Summary: Compromised by emotional impulsivity, she had him erased from her mind. By feeding her unconscious form his memories of their relationship, he was able to rewrite the past. Jillian, engaged to a new man, is blissfully unaware of the one person that had taught her how to love. Will Kurama be able to spark her memory before she vows her love to another?
1. IntroOutro

My arms floated above me as I stretched in the early morning light. I hadn`t opened my eyes yet, still bracing them for the brightness that was about to burn my retinas. I knew I would have to get up, there were things that needed to be done. However, every last moment curled under the thick, downy comforter was precious and I cherished the last final seconds of peace before the alarm next to me went off.

When my heavy eyelids opened, they were flooded with nothing but white. You see, white was my favorite color – it was clean, simple. The walls, carpet, and all of my bedding looked like a blanket of freshly fallen snow. The light-wash chestnut color of my furniture was the only color in the room that I had allowed. There were no pictures on my walls, instead I hung an assortment of shaped mirrors above my bed, to make the room appear larger. I liked how they would catch the light.

As for possessions, well, the blaring alarm clock was the only other color tone in the room that I allowed to show itself. I groaned, rolling over and slamming the "Off" button on the top of the small machine. As I pulled my hand back to my side, I noticed something catch the light.

My engagement ring. The slim, diamond-encrusted silver rim that surrounded a larger cut diamond that was set atop the band. I held my hand carefully, admiring the perfect piece of jewelry that had sealed the deal between my lover and I.

Then it came rushing to me, the face of the man that had presented me with the diamond, his face came into view. His delicate features, porcelain skin. The way his eyes had shone when he held my newly adorned hand in his, as his gaze snapped back and forth from my finger to my eyes, which were filling with tears.

Most women felt this warmth when they could feel the weight on their finger, but sometimes it would take me a moment to realize that it was real.

I found my feet carrying me to the bathroom that connected my room to my sister's. She had left a damp towel on the floor, and I felt a tinge of annoyance before I bent down to pick it up.

I yanked open the door to the towel closet, and was just about to throw it into the hamper when I noticed the mascara stains on it. I shook with anger and grabbed the Spray 'N Wash bottle off the shelf, dowsing the once perfect, fluffy, white towel with the solution, praying that it would get the stains out. I then carried it throughout the apartment to the laundry room and tossed it into the washer bin. I used too much force to turn the dial on the machine, but as I felt it click under my palm, I instantly felt soothed. I released the breath I had been holding the entire time and slumped my shoulders.

This disorder was going to be the end of me.

"Jill?" I heard Elise`s familiar voice call from the entryway of our loft. I heard her drop her running shoes onto the tile floor and step up onto the wooden floorboards that covered the floor of the kitchen and sitting room. I stepped out from the laundry room and saw her standing at the kitchen counter, looking out the large windows that lined an entire wall of our apartment.

"It`s so beautiful out, I just had to go for a run," She said, before tossing back the rest of the water in her glass.

"You left a towel on the floor again. You need to wash your face, there was mascara all over it,"

"Sorry, it won`t happen again."

"Uh huh," I rolled my eyes, having heard that one before. I then retreated to our bathroom once more to take my shower and get ready before heading off to the University.

* * *

**I - INTROOUTRO**

**Don`t forget—we`ve got unfinished business**

**Stories left to unfold, tales that must be retold. **

Jillian-san!" The group of small girls greeted me as the glass doors to the ballet studio swung open. They rushed in, dressed in an variety of colored leotards and tights.

One of my girls, Chihiro, came to me and greeted me with a big grin, a few baby teeth missing. She shoved a water color painting into my face.

"I painted you this picture!" She beamed, radiant with youth.

"Why, thank you!" I chimed, patting her head and taking the paper from her. There were two blotches of paint on the page in the form of people. One had yellow hair and a pink dress, and the other was a boy with brown hair and was dressed in purple.

"Who are these people?" I asked her, looking down at her curiously.

"You and Daisuke-san," She rocked back on her heels, waiting for my reply.

"Oh, it`s so beautiful. I`m sure Daisuke will love it too!" I felt my cheeks turn pink, "Go on over and do your stretches with the other girls, dear,"

Chihiro nodded and bounced off. I looked across the room at the wall of mirrors and at my reflection. I looked happy.

So why did I feel so misplaced?

I was halfway through teaching the girls the choreography I had made to _A Friend Like Me _from Disney`s _Aladdin _when I noticed a man watching through the glass doors in the hallway. He was tall, with long, fire engine red hair and emerald eyes. There was a grin plastered on his face.

I stopped, and I turned and looked back at my girls, who were mimicking my moves, twirling and making up there own steps as the rest of the song played in the background.

"Go ahead and practice that for a couple minutes, girls," I told them, "I`ll be back in just a minute."

They happily went back to their positions and attempted to remember the set I had just shown them.

"Hello," I said as I pushed the glass door open, "Can I help you?" I asked, having to tilt my head up a little to look him in the eye.

His smile disappeared from his face and he chuckled a little,

"I suppose so, when are you free this evening?" He asked.

My mouth hung agape for a moment, and I looked back at my girls instinctively, making sure they weren`t eyeballing me, my protective instincts going haywire on me all the sudden. They continued to dance and twirl in circles. Some were practicing their positions.

"I`m sorry, who did you say you were again?" I asked, tensing up a little. I began to feel my whole body getting very defensive,

His eyebrows furrowed at me and his head tilted a little. I noticed his eyes wander down to my hand that was holding the door open. A look of shock appeared on his face as he eyeballed the rock on my finger, but it melted away into another look that was unreadable, blank. He looked back up at me, questions filling his eyes.

"I didn`t say, I apologize for bothering you at work…" He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but he began to back away from me, and then turned around to walk down the hallway, looking back at me, skeptically, before his brisk steps rounded the corner.

I stood in the doorway for a moment after he had disappeared, and I decided that I would have Daisuke pick me up after my classes so that I didn`t have to walk home.

I shuddered dramatically as I felt little fingers wrap around mine, and I looked down to find Chihiro looking up at me, concerned.

"Why was _he_ here?" She frowned, her chubby cheeks looking misplaced in the pout. I could tell that she too, was defensive now. My little girls and I were a very tight knit group, they were smart.

"I have no idea," I looked back up, to where the man was standing.

"He`s bad," Her tiny voice wavered. My eyes widened,

"Chihiro, do you know him?" I asked, kneeling down to her level. Her brow furrowed, and she gave me a confused look,

"He`s the one that made you sad."

I opened my mouth to inquire about what she was trying to tell me, but I noticed the other girls standing a few feet away, just watching. I met their eyes, and they too looked as confused as I did, so I decided to break the awkward feeling that was taking over the studio.

"You ain`t never had a friend like me," I sang, smiling mischievously and wiggling my eyebrows at them as they all turned to rush to their positions, giggling.

"Ready?" I asked, positioning myself in front of them, my hands placed together at the top of my head, like a Genie. I looked back, and began when they had all straightened and aligned their arms as mine were.

/

There was nothing but white noise for the first few seconds on the tape. Then there was the sound of movement, a breath being drawn.

"_My name is Jillian Beckett, and I would like to erase Shuichi Minamino, otherwise known as Youko Kurama, from my memory."_

Botan had spent all afternoon ripping through files with Kurama to find the recording. Next to the tape player there was a thick manila folder labeled with her full name.

He listened, his mouth pressed into a tight line as Jillian laid down all of her troubles on the tape, all of the reasons why she needed him erased from her life.

Botan squirmed a little from her seat among the filing cabinets on the floor next to him. She remembered feeling that uncomfortable when she had first escorted Jill to Koenma`s office so that she could request to have the procedure done.

Usually Jillian had confidence, she stood straight, with a comforting air about her. She had always been a very beautiful girl, with slightly sun kissed skin and long, golden hair that shimmered with several colored highlights. Her appearance was always neat, and she dressed proudly, showing off her body without wearing anything too revealing or form fitting. She was an admirable young woman.

But that day, she had looked miserable. Her muscular, tiny frame had deteriorated to one that looked boney and slightly anorexic, her bones more prominent than what was healthy. She looked like a ghost of herself, with skin as white as a sheet. Her slate irises were dark enough to match her pupils.

Her hair was disheveled, and the color had blended together into one tone of dark, lifeless blonde. That perfect, pink, heart shaped mouth was pressed into a tight, chapped-lipped frown.

It had been almost a year that the boys had disappeared to the Makai, and the separation had clearly taken its toll on Jillian.

Naturally, Botan had tried to talk her out of the procedure, but she was persistent in fighting with Koenma to get her old life back; The one where she had been unaware of the Spirit World, demons, and especially Kurama.

"_When my parents separated, Elise went to live with my mother and our grandparents in Osaka, and my father and I moved into the loft on the outskirts of Tokyo. Shiori worked for my father`s company, and he knew that she had a son that attended the same junior high school that I had. So on the evenings he worked late or when he took business trips out of town, I would walk home from school with Shuichi and stay at their house._

_I had always known there was something different about him. I guess that`s why I was drawn to him. I enjoy weird people, being that I have BPD. The weirder he started to seem the more interested I became. I started to become fond of his personality, though at times it was frigid. I just assumed that he would warm up to me eventually, and that the frigidness would melt away the longer we were friends._

_But here I am," _She laughed darkly, pausing.

"_I`m too much of an affectionate person. I can`t not know for certain that I am loved by the person I`m with. He`s very distant, like when he`s next to me, he`s miles away. I don`t know what he`s feeling, because he`s so tight lipped. I`m the opposite. I let him know with every fiber of my being that I was very much in love with him, that I cared about him."_

It was apparent in her voice that she was crying a little as she spoke.

"_Jillian, we know you to be a rather impulsive person," _Koenma`s adult form was speaking now,

"_You have a history of struggling with Borderline Personality Disorder. Forgive me if this offends you, but do you think this could be stemming from your irrational fear of abandonment?"_

"_You don`t know him like I do,"_

Her voice had taken on a dark edge, anger shining through,

"_I have tried for months to take a step back and differentiate how my head is screwing with the situation and what is really going on, and I feel in my heart,"_

She stopped for a long pause.

"_I`ve always wanted to fall in love. But the thing is, I just can`t do it right. I guess I liked the idea of being in love. When I was faced with having to emotionally invest so much in it and not having it returned the way I thought it should have been… Well, this is how I`m dealing with it."_

"_Maybe you should talk to Kurama first?"_

"_I know if I look at him, even if it`s just for a moment, that I will forget and forgive everything that I feel when he`s gone like this. He comes and goes, just disappears. I`m afraid that this time he really isn`t coming back-"_

_Click._

"I`ve heard enough," Kurama stopped the tape, "Is there any way at all to reverse the effect?"

"Koenma has forbidden me to release that information," She told him, "We tried to talk her out of it, Kurama," She squeezed his shoulder as to try and comfort him, but his face remained the same.

"I see, that does put a damper on this situation. I suppose there`s nothing left to do except move on."

With that, he rose to his feet and disappeared out the door, leaving Botan to herself.

"Oh dear," She gasped, looking back down to the tape player and realizing that Jillian`s folder was missing from its spot on the floor.

She had half the mind to chase down Kurama, but her conscious got the best of her. She decided to let him keep if, at least for a little while.

/

"Where`s Kurama? And Jillian?" Keiko asked, looking around as the train was about to depart.

Kuwabara began to choke on the piece of sushi he had just stuffed into his mouth, he gasped for air and started beating his fist into his chest to free the piece of food from his throat.

Shizuru raised an eyebrow, observing her brother`s reaction to the question.

"Yeah, Bro, why don`t you tell us why they aren`t coming with us?"

The two girls patiently waited for Kazuma to compose himself, Keiko twisting a lock of hair around her finger, and Shizuru watching with narrowed eyes.

"I don`t know how to tell you girls," He grumbled, "So I guess I`ll just spill."

Shizuru felt a weight drop in her stomach. She knew there was a reason Jillian had been so difficult to get a hold of lately.

"I got this in the mail a few months ago," He pulled out a crumpled card from his pocket and handed it over to Keiko, who read it aloud.

"Jillian Beckett has had her memory erased… " Her eyes widened at the next sentence, "Please refrain from mentioning your relationship to her from this point on! What on Earth?!"

"Jillian demanded that Koenma erase her memories of Kurama, apparently her memories of us were erased as well."

"But why would she want to erase Kurama? I thought they," Keiko stopped, afraid of what her mind was putting together.

"Does he know?" Shizuru inquired, folding the paper she had been reading onto her lap.

"Botan told him a couple weeks ago. I just found out yesterday when I asked him if he was still meeting up with us. Told me that he was too busy and that he says hi."

"Why did she do it?" Keiko, pressed again.

"Kurama says she panicked when he left for Demon World,"

"Jillian has abandonment issues," Shizuru explained to the brunette to her right, "You remember when she watched him fight in the Dark Tournament? I can only imagine how bad it must have gotten for her to have done something so drastic."

"I wonder how he`s taking this…" Keiko trailed, her eyes downcast,

"But I know how she must have felt. I haven`t seen Yusuke in years."

Shizuru wrapped her arm around Keiko, squeezing her tightly.

"Hold on Keiko," She reassured her, "I have a feeling everything is going to work itself out."

"Maybe that`s the reason Genkai wanted us all to visit her," Keiko said hopefully, "Maybe she`ll know how to help."

/

Breaking into the Beckett`s loft was simple enough, being that Jillian had given me a copy of the key years ago. However, that didn`t take away the unsettling feeling that washed over me. I was now an intruder in a place I had visited frequently for the past six years of my human life. The feeling passed soon enough, being that thievery was a larger part of my past life.

It was seven fifteen. Elise had just slipped out for her usual five miles and Jillian was teaching violin in the Suzuki wing at the university until eight thirty. I had about a forty minute time frame before Elise would come back to shower and study before retiring for the evening.

The scent of clean linen hung in the air. Jillian must have taken a their bed sheets out of the washer and put them away before she left for her violin lessons. It was Tuesday, after all, and she wouldn`t dare climb into bed if her sheets hadn`t been washed.

Being that Jillian was a minimalist when it came to clutter lying around, the first thing I did was hide my shoes in the one place I knew she wouldn`t be looking through that evening, that being the top shelf of the pantry.

Jillian and Elise never ate after seven thirty.

Although Botan could not directly give me the information that I needed to return Jill`s memories to her, she unknowingly provided me with the information that would lead me to the book I needed from Koenma`s library when she let me take a look at Jillian`s files.

I found that with the help of my life energy and an incantation, I would be able to feed the memories that I had of Jillian into her mind and thus acting as a sort of defibrillator to the damaged brain cells that were holding onto the information regarding her relationship with not only myself, but those she was connected to through her relationship with me (Yusuke, Kuwabara, Keiko, et cetera).

A deep sleep would be achieved by the help of the opiates I had extracted from poppy seeds, giving a similar effect on the body as morphine, ensuring that she would not awaken in the process.

I stripped the pillow on the left side of the bed from it`s case and leaked the clear liquid opium blend I had made onto it, soaking the case. I tossed it into the dryer and waited patiently for it to dry. It was odorless, as I knew Jillian would know be thrown into a panic if her recently washed pillow case didn`t smell clean to her. To be sure, I rubbed a dryer sheet over the case after it had dried. I slipped it back over the pillow and set it back on the bed under the pile of white decorator pillows that adorned her bed.

I stepped back, making sure that I had put everything back to Jillian`s liking. The only thing left to do was wait.

/

"Are we still on for tomorrow, then?"

The crows feet on the outside of Daisuke`s big, brown eyes always appeared when he smiled, and I couldn`t help but smile back when I saw them appear.

"Of course!" I gave him a peck on the cheek before I opened the car door. He caught my arm, lightly, and pulled my lips on top of his briefly, giving me a proper goodbye kiss. When our faced parted, we both laughed a little.

"Goodnight, Princess Jill." He joked, ruffling my hair with one hand. I leaned back and ruffled his harder, using both hands to sift through his slicked back brown air, disheveling it for good. He would need a comb to fix it, which I knew he didn`t have on him, forcing him to look like an idiot for the drive back to his apartment.

"Goodnight, Stable Boy," I replied while giggling like crazy before slamming the car door shut over enthusiastically.

He rolled down the passenger side window and called out to me,

"Seven thirty tomorrow night! And we really can`t be late this time – I made reservations!"

"Seven thirty, I promise!" I waved back at him as I vanished into my building.

Elise was on the sofa watching her usual guilty pleasure drama series in her pajamas. She held a finger to her lips as I walked in, warning me that if she missed a single millisecond of the episode by making noise, she would throw a tizzy fit.

I tip toed around the sitting area, with my bag on my shoulder and my shoes in my hand. My naked feet didn`t make a single floorboard creak beneath me.

I shut the door to my room behind me, and walked across the white carpet to the door on the other end of the room, leading to what was once my father`s office. When he moved out, I had selfishly claimed it as my dressing room, and he helped me install shelves and rails to put my belongings.

I wiped the bottom of my black pumps off with a wet wipe before placing them on the shelf among the other solid colored pumps. I hung my bag on the hook on the back of the door so that I could grab it on my way out in the morning, requiring all of the same necessities it held.

I grabbed a clean bra and pair of underwear from the dresser and shut the door behind me as I entered back into my room and froze. I had caught a whiff of something, flowers. My room smelled faintly of roses.

I could feel my forehead scrunch thoughtfully as I walked back out into the living room, to find Elise picking at her fingernails during a commercial break.

"Elise, did you spray perfume?"

She looked over the back of the sofa and frowned, shaking her head at me.

I frowned back at her.

"Huh, my room smells like roses or something." I told her. She rose to her feet and I moved to the side so that she could come into my room and smell for herself. She sniffed the air with her petite little nose, and shook her head again.

"No, Jill, I think it`s just your head again. Go to bed, weirdo." She joked, elbowing me in the stomach before walking out. I rolled my eyes and shut my door behind her.

I tied my hair up in a topknot before stripping and showering off. I made a mental note that I would have to buy another loofah after this shower, it had almost been three weeks since I`d bought it. I almost convinced myself that mold was already starting to grow on it, but I took a deep breath and told myself that it was in my head, because it really was.

Clean and in a fresh pair of undergarments, I walked back into the white bedroom and began to take the decorator pillows off the bed. I was growing sleepier as I hovered over my bed. I slipped into my pajama pants, and felt a sudden wave of weariness wash over me. I must have been more exhausted than I realized. I hadn`t even finished changing into my pajamas when I crawled under the comforter and rested my head for just a minute, telling myself I still needed finish putting the decoration pillows away and button my shirt.

But sleep was too powerful, and claimed my conscious before I knew what was happening. I sunk deeper into my pillow, bathing in the lamp light that was coming from my bedside table. I felt too much at peace in that moment to bother with anything else. I was clean and comfortable, and cared about nothing else.

I feel the bed shift slightly, and breathe in a familiar, comforting scent. The smell tugged at my heart strings, and I felt a warmth grow in my chest as I snuggled further into my pillow, the scent of clean laundry filling my nostrils.

"Are you clean, Daisuke?" I murmur into the downy pillow, and hear a soothing breath escape from his lips,

"Yes, Jill," He says, his voice intoxicatingly soothing, "I`m clean."

And with that, I let my dreams claim me.


	2. Night Terrors

_I remember the last time I saw you._

**/ ****Jillian**

"Jillian, wake up," He shook me softly, and I opened my eyes to the sight of red on white sitting at the foot of my bed.

"You know how I feel about street clothes touching my bed." I looked down to find Shuichi fully dressed, except for his shoes which I presumed were sitting by the front door. Technically he wasn`t in my bed, he was sitting at the end of it, his hand still placed on my leg from where he shook me awake.

"So you remember," He breathed, a relieved look gracing his face. I noticed that he was wearing the leather jacket I`d given him. He was ready to go somewhere.

I felt my heart fall deep into the depths of my body.

I knew this pain like the back of my hand.

"Yes, I remember. You`re going back _there_ again, aren`t you?" I narrowed my eyes at as I sat up, leaning back against the headboard.

"Now Jillian, you know I`ll be back in a little while." He tried to reason with me. He found the need to talk to me like an eight year old.

Though I will admit, I did tend to act very childish for someone starting up University in the fall.

"What did you tell Shiori this time? Or did you just buy her another honeymoon to Hawaii? Or maybe Paris?" I grumbled, pretending to check for dirt under my fingernails that I knew wouldn`t be there.

"I don`t know why you pretend to be so bitter about that, I did offer if you wanted to go."

"Maybe I`m bitter because you`re leaving _again_! The tournament is over so why do you still find reasons to go back?" I looked over to the digital clock on my bedside table. It was four in the morning and Elise was sleeping in the other room. I decided to take it down a few decibels.

"I don`t know how Yukimura does it."

"She must have more faith in Yusuke than you do in me." His tone was dark, his words slicing into my heart.

I felt my entire being shaking at his comment.

"That was what set you off," He spoke, and he took his jacket off and set it on the floor. He climbed over the comforter and sat himself next to me, leaning against my headboard. His arms wrapped around me protectively, as if he was holding onto me for dear life. He pulled me against him. I listened to his heart beat in his chest for a few quiet moments.

"You made me leave, though I tried to apologize. You went to Koenma, begged him to have your memories erased."

I remained still, not able to look at him.

"Why did you do it?" His voice was quieter now, and I felt tears burn my eyes a little.

"I`m sorry," I choked out, turning to cry into his chest, but he didn`t let me hide my face from him. He cupped my face in his hand and wiped away my tears with his thumb, his other arm curled around my shoulders, fingers tightly wrapped around my upper arm, holding on to me as if I could disappear at any moment.

"I just don`t know what I`m doing-" I blurted, "I`m impulsive, I wanted to stop hurting, and it was the only thing I could think of. I was so tired of feeling like…"

I lifted my hand from his shirt, and laid it over the fingers that were clutching my arm.

"Like we never got a break," I searched his green eyes for some sort of understanding,

"Maybe you find me just as difficult as I find you."

His expression changed when I said this, like we were guilty of exactly that. His thumb swiped at another tear that was rolling down my face.

"There aren`t any books on how to figure you out, nothing to show me how to defrost you when you get quiet like this." I continued.

"Oh Jill," He pulled me back to him and smoothed my hair, pressing his mouth to my crown of golden bed head.

"We are opposites to say the least," He admitted, "But I suppose that`s what makes things entertaining."

"This isn`t entertaining," I whined, muffled by his shirt, "This is just a mess. I`m sorry."

"There`s no use apologizing now," He spoke into my hair, "We just have to figure out how to make you remember all of this when you wake up."

"You mean you haven`t yet?" I panicked, feeling my heart race.

"Calm down, Jillian, you`re going to wake yourself up!" He barked at me, sitting up straight, looking around my bedroom as if it would fall apart.

"What happens if I wake up?"

"It appears that we don`t have time to dwell on that right now." He grabbed a hold of my wrist, pulling me with him as he climbed off of my bed,

"Quick, what was the last memory you have of us that you can remember?"

I couldn`t stop panicking, it was like he was throwing a ring of fire at me to jump through.

"Jillian-" He was cut off as the room began to shake. My lamp fell off the bedside table and the room went dark, but I could still feel his hand on my wrist, pulling me.

We were running.

* * *

**II - NIGHT TERRORS**

**Come on, a second chance at love.**

**The moment`s slept, make you feel like it`s never staying.**

"I can`t think like this!" My voice echoed down the long, dark hallway he was leading me through. I don`t know when or where it appeared from, but it seemed endless.

Suddenly a lit doorway came into view, and I could see the outline of him in front of me, dragging me along by my wrist.

The light grew brighter the closer we ran towards it, until it swallowed us completely. I couldn`t feel his hand around my wrist anymore.

"Shuichi!" I shouted, my voice still echoing back at me.

_Try to think of the last time you saw me._

I can`t.

_You remembered that night, didn`t you?_

Yeah, but,

_What happened before that night? _

…We went to Genkai`s.

"Where`s Yusuke anyway?" I plucked absent mindedly at the grass we were lying in. The valley was quiet, peaceful. Though the forest surrounding us had been filled with vindictive demons and booby-traps before, all was quiet and safe. Ever since the barrier between the human and demon worlds had been let down, and the new laws had been established, the time seemed to slip by in a routinely matter. Things seemed a lot less complicated than they had before.

I couldn`t remember a time before that when I had felt so at ease.

"Soul searching, I suppose. Who knows why he remains, I`m sure he has his reasons." Shuichi was lying on his back amid the grass and wildflowers that were blooming. It was late summer, and Shuichi had returned almost a year and a half before. We had graduated from Meiou High together and we were both on our way to neighboring Universities located in Tokyo. We were never separated by much in the living world.

And yet for some reason our time together always seemed to speed by.

"Soul searching, what a bunch of bullcrap," I laid down next to him, my head fitting under his arm.

"Our savior among men," I spat sarcastically, "Can`t even come back and say hi every once in a while. Poor Keiko…"

I pitied her. I was selfish with Shuichi. I took his presence for granted. He always returned, which was why my choice was so stupid.

The mind is a complicated thing, and with the poisonous thoughts that I had steadily fed myself my entire life… Well, it didn`t help in reassuring me that not everyone`s goal in life was to hurt me. I did what my mind told me needed to be done to survive.

"Keiko has a strong will. She held on just long enough."

"What?" I rolled onto my elbows, clearly I had missed something.

"Please tell me Keiko`s alright," Concern filled my voice. Keiko had been close friends with Elise since junior highschool. She and Elise had even applied to the same High School.

"She`s fine. Yusuke returned exactly when he said he would."

"About time." I looked up at the sky. A perfect blue, cloudless and sunny.

"I wonder where she was when this moment occurred. I remember her telling me about the friends she`d made in her first year of High School. We used to be so close. She was like having another sister."

"She loves you and Elise, don`t let your feeble mind tricks fool you." He opened his left eye and looked up at me to see my reaction, making sure that he hadn`t offended me.

"Am I doing alright?" I was referring to the memory I had come up with on the spot.

"Quite, but perhaps it would be a good idea to map things out, so that we can hit the ground running tomorrow night."

"Will I remember this when I wake up?"

He was quiet, letting his eyes rest for what I deemed to be too long. I fidgeted, plucking out more grass and wild flowers before he finally gave me an answer. His eyes opened, and those emerald irises slid over to look at me. He turned onto his side, propping his head against his hand. He watched me curiously as I stopped tugging at the ground to look back at him, expectantly.

"If things were that simple we wouldn`t need a strategy. I am trying to reactivate the brain cells that the procedure has damaged. It`s a process that even modern science has yet to figure out. I had to bend a few rules to find out how to reverse the process."

"They won`t extend your parole, will they?"

He averted his eyes as the wind picked up, rustling the leaves on the trees. His silence was unnerving, and I took that as a "yes".

"I suppose my punishment will be revealed if, and when they realize you can remember everything."

I felt the familiar tingling sensation burning through my sinuses as tears formed in my eyes.

I sat up, curling my knees to my chin and turning so that his view was blocked.

"Why are you upset?" His tone was steady, and I know I shouldn`t have been as offended as I was by the question, but I snapped anyway.

"Because, we can`t win!" I cried, standing and kicking at the ground. I watched as dirt clots flung themselves across the valley from the force that I`d used.

"I erased my memories because I couldn`t be without you all the time, and you go through all of that trouble to try and get them back just so you can go and play another round of around the world in eighty days with god damn Koenma for the hundredth time this year!"

"Jillian, _please_," Those strong arms slid around me and held me tightly, trying to dissuade me. I struggled, trying to pull myself away from him. I did not want to be comforted. I wanted to be miserable. I knew he was only holding me to calm me down, as a way to avoid this memory from fizzing out like the last one did.

I wanted to just throw my tizzy fit.

"Things may not be as bad as you think,"

I kept my stare fixed on a dandelion that was swaying in the warm summer breeze.

I felt cold, though my blood was simmering underneath my skin. I could decapitate that little toddler ruler in that very moment.

"Botan allowed me to take your file and utilize it to find the book that I needed from Koenma`s library. Koenma had previously given me accessibility to that part of Spirit World. I could have found the information that I needed, it just would have taken a while longer. I owe nothing to Koenma now, my parole has been lifted. Please just contain yourself. The rug could be pulled from under our feet without a moment`s notice and we will be forced to escape to another memory. If we hesitate another moment, it could cost us both our lives."

I froze at those last words, letting them sink inside of me like anchors tied to my ankles.

"What do you mean, it could cost our lives?"

I felt his grip tighten as he cemented his arms around me.

"When the last memory I revived began to deteriorate around us, I felt my soul separating from my body. I was in a state between life and death. I could only speak to you in that form because you were asleep."

Chills ran up my spine, the fear of God in me now,

"I could have killed you."

"Even worse, you would have been left in a comatose state forever." He rested his chin onto my shoulder, nuzzling his head against mine,

"But we`re safe now, and as long as one of us awakens and ends the dream on our own terms, we should be fine. As long as these memories don`t deter too far from their original paths, they should stay steady. Should that fail, our map will come into play."

"I`ll try to keep my temper, then," I sighed, and he let me slip from his arms. I faced him, having to tilt my head to look him in the eye.

A cool breeze caused me to shudder a little. A shadow fell over the valley.

Shuichi`s eyes snapped shut, and when they opened again, he was looking down at me with eyelids laden with sadness,

"We don`t have a lot of time."

My eyes widened at his words, but he squeezed my shoulder tightly.

"Don`t you dare panic now, I don`t have the energy to hold this together at the moment," He warned. I nodded, grinding my teeth as I tried to immobilize my nerves.

"Shiori`s wedding," I shook him a little, "I want to see Shiori again,"

"Then we`ll meet there, tomorrow night," His eyes searched mine,

"It`s almost certain that you won`t remember these dreams when you awaken. I need you to have patience, it could take a very long time. But one day you will remember, and all of this information will be there."

He extended his hand out to me, and brushed a lock of hair behind my ear.

He then leaned forward, so that our faces were almost touching before whispering,

"And I will be there as well."

"Don`t go," I whispered to him, closing my eyes. I could feel our surroundings growing darker, and there was no telling what time it was on the outside.

I could smell him, like he was really there.

"It won`t be long," I felt the vibrations from his voice moving through my ears as he spoke, and then his lips pressed against mine.

I felt myself falling backwards into blackness, the same kind of falling that jerks you from dreams.

/

**Elise**

I was startled awake, shooting up from my bed all the sudden. I didn`t realize at first that it was due to Jillian`s screaming. When I collected myself, I flung my legs over the side of my bed and took the shortcut through our bathroom and into her bedroom.

The light was on, and she was curled into a ball up against her headboard with red rimmed eyes and tears streaming down her face. This wasn`t the first time something like this had occurred.

"Jillian, it`s me," I sat on the side of her bed, taking her hand.

"Elise," She blubbered from behind her free hand which she was now using to clamp over her mouth, muffling the sound.

I hadn`t seen her like this since for months.

"Yes, it`s me." I reassured her, stroking her hand. She was still breathing hard.

"Why are you crying?"

"I don`t know!" She shouted, and burst into another fit of tears. At times like these I didn`t know what else to do but hold her. It was strange, sometimes I felt like I was the one taking care of her. She had guardianship over me, yet I had always been the more responsible of the two of us.

"Was it a nightmare?" I asked, as I let her cry into my shoulder. She sniffled in silence for a couple moments, thinking.

"I don`t remember. I just feel so empty."

Ah, the emptiness. I knew how to cure that.

Usually when Jillian felt empty, it was because she had missed her dosage of Celexa. Sure enough, I found the pill still sitting out on the bathroom counter with a glass of water next to it.

"How could I have forgotten that?" She spoke to herself as she tossed 40 mg of happiness in compact form down her throat. Soon enough she would feel the sunshine again and be at peace.

"Doesn`t matter, just go back to sleep." I yawned, and I literally tucked my older sister back into bed. As soon as her head hit the pillow again, she was out like a light.

Speaking of, as I reached over to turn the lamp off, I noticed something.

A strand of red hair was sitting atop one of the decorative pillows on Jillian`s bed.

I plucked it from it`s place and studied it. I knew who`s hair it was, but I had hoped that it was just my tired eyes playing tricks on me. But no, there was definitely a long strand of fire engine red hair lying against the crisp white of Jill`s bedding.

If she was ever going to get better, it was going to be without _him_.

If I didn`t know for sure that Kurama would never lay a finger on me, I would have searched all of the rooms with caution.

But the desire to catch him in the act was too delicious to refuse and I all but broke the door on my way into her dressing room.

I found nothing.

Of course, even if he were in the apartment, the Master Thief would hardly be found by a mere human girl. Defeated, I went back into Jillian`s room and turned her light off for her. She didn`t stir, exhausted from her tantrum.

I flushed the strand, in case Jillian were to find it somewhere around the house. No doubt she would have a million questions as to whose it was and how peculiar it seemed.

I made a round around the apartment, checking the door and all of the windows, making sure they were secure before climbing back into my bed.

"Step off, Kurama."

/

**special thank you to my first reviewer, crossyourteez**

**Out of habit, I use the ` symbol instead of '.**

**If I hadn`t been doing it for so long I would type like a normal person, but I`m lazy af. Yolo.**


	3. It's A Problem

**III - IT`S A PROBLEM**

**Pink lipstick stains, cigarette butts. **

**I lie in bed, I hate my guts.**

* * *

** Elise**

I have always been the strongest person in my family.

When Mom got into that accident, she lost her mind. Dear old Daddy left her, not wanting to bother with having a mentally disabled wife. She and I moved in with Grandma and Grandpa in Osaka, and I lived there for most of my Middle School life.

It was when I was about to go into Junior High that my father had been given full custody of me, and I moved into his loft with my older sister. He was more unfit to parent us than my mother was. At least she was at every recital, every tennis match and birthday party. She had lost all of her senses, and many memories as well, but she still knew that she loved us. She still knew us to be her children.

I took care of my mother when she got sick. I was there for her until the day my Aunt took her into her care, when I went to live at Dad`s.

Now I take care of Jillian. I have since the day I moved back in with her. We shared a room, it was before Dad let Jillian have his room when he started traveling around the country, when he abandoned us when we needed his presence the most.

I remember every nightmare she put herself through. I sat in the waiting room at all of the therapy sessions. Dad footed the bill, but never asked or even acted concerned. Ever since mother, mental illness scared him. He knew Jillian`s situation was different, but he still turned his back to her.

Jillian was peculiar. She was filled with rage and self loathing, and during her High School years she basically did whatever, (and according to her peers,_ whomever)_ she desired.

You see, Jillian`s _problem_ was that she had been spoiled by our father her entire life. She did whatever she wanted and got whatever she wanted.

He would let us take his credit card and cash out whenever we went into town and he told us it was only fair because he didn`t give us an allowance, but I knew it was just him making up for the fact that he didn`t know how to love us.

Of course, some of that money Jillian had made herself. She had been a model since a very young age and had been playing her violin at weddings for years to make extra on the side as her own source of income.

I usually spent Dad`s money on music, candy, tickets to shows, things to entertain me.

None of which added up to or even began to compare to Jillian`s obsession with shoes, clothes, and makeup. She loved cosmetics, and owned just about every color lipstick and mascara fathomable from high end counters, such as Dior and Lancôme.

And the blowouts for her hair were pricey as well. Sometimes she would drag me to the salon with her so that I could have my hair styled and trimmed. She never let me get highlights or lowlights, though. She swore that she would end her life if I ever tampered with the color of my hair.

She had always been so envious of my light, blonde hair. She had nothing to be envious of, as her hair looked like long strands of spun gold.

My hair looked, well, _white_.

I spent many evenings letting her curl it and play with it as I sat at the vanity with my text books laid out in front of me.

School was important to me. While I would never inherit the specific talents that Jillian had, I was a smart girl that worked hard for my grades, and I was extremely competitive when it came to sports. Daddy paid for Jillian`s education out the ass. He handed over a load of money for her to attend Meiou High because she hadn`t bothered to even crack a text book her entire Junior High career.

Everyone knew it too, and her peers never hesitated to give her grief about it. But Jillian was a force to be reckoned with it, and she would retort with crueler words than the ones that had been dished out to her. She was often the reason her male peers got into fist fights. She found it amusing to play with the boys. She would flirt with one for about a week and move onto another one.

When asked why she would do such things, she would reply with,

"I have to do something to keep myself occupied. Now hold your hand still, your fingernails are curved and I`m going to end up painting your skin if you keep shaking."

I was her doll, and she kept me looking nearly as dainty as she kept herself. Of course, she was more mature looking that I was. No matter how she dressed me or applied my makeup, I still looked like a child. Boys found me cute, but they would much rather have had Jillian.

My sister had many layers. She looked delicate and feminine, what with her voluminous blonde blow outs and red lip stick, but she was a ticking time bomb. She was ready to blow up in the face of anyone that found her prickly side. I pitied the girls that crossed her with petty drama and jealous antics, for Jillian could get pretty petty when she wanted revenge.

There were topics that had always been off limits in the girl world that Jillian would always step all over if she wanted to.

When she wasn`t striving to achieve the label of HBIC (Head bitch in charge), she was actually a very passionate human being. She never hesitated to comfort a friend, to reach out to someone that needed help. She always had the best advice about guys.

Keiko and I talked to her about everything. She would tell us stories about who she screwed over that day at Meiou and we would just roll around on the carpet and laugh. And she was one hell of an older sister, despite her flaws.

She would show up to my Tennis matches and track meets just to scream for me until her voice would give out. She always brought a group of people along with her to cheer, and I had soon found the reputation of being Jillian`s perfect little sister, bound to fill her shoes one day.

She truly adored me, and shared all of her thoughts with me as well. Sometimes I was under the impression that she told me more than her therapist. I knew what she felt at every single moment. No one else understood that she flaunted herself so shamelessly on the outside because she was always her hardest critic on the inside. She thought she was the worst, so she would constantly act as if she was the best.

And everyone else bought into it.

Except for one, a boy who was also given an inside look at what it was like to be a Beckett.

Though he didn`t want to deal with her himself, our Daddy wasn`t an idiot. Jillian scared him more than she did her own enemies. Nothing is more terrifying than having a child be a threat to their own self, and he was pacified only by the thought of her being constantly looked after.

So she was Shiori Minamino`s responsibility whenever Dad couldn`t be bothered.

Now, I never had the pleasure of spending as much time at their house as she did. But I do know that Jillian couldn`t hide herself from the woman forever. Shiori was the one that had taken her to her counseling appointments before I moved in. She knew many of Jillian`s secrets that our father had purposely overlooked.

Maybe it was for the best that she spent some time out of the loft with other humans.

Sometimes I would wonder if she did harmful things to herself out of boredom. Sometimes I would think it was for Dad`s attention.

One would assume that Shiori Minamino would have been happy to have Jillian out of her house, but she always managed to show up to Jillian`s dance and violin recitals. She sent her cards every year on her birthday and Christmas.

Once I overheard Jillian ordering Shiori flowers on mother`s day. It was a nice gesture, except for the fact that Jillian didn`t give a single shit about our own mother, who was brain dead and living in our Aunt`s basement.

As usual, I hid my anger from her. She had enough problems.

"El-chan!"

Crap. I spun around in my seat to see Keiko Yukimura slide into the empty desk behind me.

"Long time no talk, huh?" She offered me a small smile. I had a feeling she knew a few things that I had tried to keep from her.

In all honesty, it had been for the best.

"Wow, you really do look more and more like Jill every day," She tucked a long lock of brown hair behind her ear as she spoke.

"How is Jill, by the way?" Her eyes held concern, and I knew. The secret was out. I returned her smile, though it was pathetic at best.

"I guess you heard, huh?" I whispered low, as the other girls in our literature class filed in slowly. Keiko nodded, frowning.

"I miss hanging out with you girls," I felt my heart sink in my chest as she spoke,

"You were like my sisters."

The guilt was overwhelming. There had to be some way to solve this. It was just Keiko, after all. She hadn`t really needed to be erased.

"Tell you what," I leaned forward, a mischievous smile gracing my lips,

"I think a slumber party is in order."

/

"Ellie, is that you?"

Jillian stepped out of her bedroom when she heard Keiko and I let ourselves into the apartment. She was in the process of fastening an earing in her bathrobe.

When she saw Keiko, she stopped, tilted her head and furrowed her brow.

"Is that Yukimura?" She asked, squinting her eyes, "I haven`t seen you since you were in Junior High!" She said, drawing nearer.

In reality, it had only been a few months since Keiko had last visited.

"Jill!" Keiko didn`t miss a beat. She ran to Jillian and threw her arms around her.

"Hey, kiddo!" Jillian locked eyes with me for a moment, but a smile stayed on her face. She patted Keiko on the back for a few seconds before she was released from her.

"It has been way too long," Keiko blurted. She looked up at my sister as if she had come back from the dead, with pure adoration.

"I agree," Jillian`s eyes flashed between Keiko`s and mine suspiciously. She checked her earing once more, making sure it was secure.

"Jill, what is that?"

Keiko`s tone was frigid as she spotted the rock on my sister`s finger.

I was in trouble. Keiko was going to pummel me for not telling her that my sister was getting engaged. I suppose I must have let it conveniently slip my mind, just as I had also forgotten to tell Keiko that she had been erased from my sister`s memories that were associated with Kurama.

"Oh, I`m getting married!" She beamed at the brunette, who stared in shock at Jillian`s hand.

"Oh," She didn`t even bother to hide the sorrow that fell on her features.

"Jeez, Keiko," My sister pouted, "Don`t act too excited or anything."

Immediately Keiko was reminded of what the situation was, and she perked right back up before a scene was made.

"Oh, It`s just so strange. We used to be having sleepovers and dreaming about getting married, and now it`s really happening."

A tear leaked out of her eye, and ran steadily down her face until it hit the ground. Damn it, Keiko. Now was not the time.

"Aw, Keiko, don`t cry!" Jillian`s mouth fell, and she drew the girl into her embrace again, smoothing her hair.

"You`ll be one of my bridesmaids, won`t you?" She asked, trying to appease the cry baby. Keiko only started to break into a full on sob into Jillian`s chest.

My sister just stared at me, horrified.

_What do I do, _She mouthed, and I reached for Yukimura`s arm and gently pulled her away. She wiped her mascara-streaked face and tried to catch her breath.

"I`m sorry," She choked, averting Jillian`s concerned eyes, "I`m just so happy." Her words were clearly pained.

"Do you want to pop a Celexa? Maybe it`ll help," Jill offered, looking to me for permission.

"I don`t think that`ll be necessary, Jilly," I smiled, leading my best friend to my doorway, "We`ll be in my room if you need us!" I waved, and shoved Keiko forcefully into the secluded area so that I could scold her without being questioned.

"Seriously, Yukimura?!" I hissed as she sat herself comforter. Jillian must`ve gotten back early, because my room had been picked up and the bed was made. Keiko slipped her blazer off and shook her head,

"I`m sorry, it`s just that Kurama-"

"Oh, please, _Kurama,"_ Venom laced every word as I turned to my closet to change out of my uniform,

"Don`t feel sorry for that little prick, it`s his fault. He did it to himself. He knows Jillian`s got a screw loose. …It isn`t her fault that she`s impulsive."

"You sound just like her."

My fingers froze momentarily over the button on my blouse.

"Whenever I would tell her about Yusuke, she would say the same things."

"Well, it`s good advice." I reassured myself. I wasn`t Jillian, I just sounded like her. I wasn`t crazy. Neither was Jillian. Her disorder was crazy, and it wasn`t what defined her. I had to constantly remind myself of that so that I could keep a better grip on my own sanity.

"Anyway, it`s been three years. Maybe you should erase Urameshi and find a real man like Jill did." I pulled a sweatshirt over my head, and I turned back to see her looking up at me, lips pressed together as if she didn`t know whether she should speak or stay silent.

"Spit it out, Keiko."

"…Yusuke`s back."

A smile spread across her face as the words hung above our heads, and I couldn`t ignore my own happiness for her. Even if I didn`t approve of the thugs my sister and best friend were hanging around, I couldn`t sway their opinions.

I wouldn`t allow myself to stomp out their rays of sunshine just because I was a big believer in umbrellas and rain boots.

/ **Jillian**

I ground the cigarette into the cement steps with my favorite, nude pumps as I saw Daisuke`s little, black sports car round the corner onto my street. I skipped and hopped down the few stairs and reached the curb just as he rolled to a stop.

I was more than eager for a night of under aged drinking, being that I was still nineteen and had a twenty two year old fiancé, I was about to get what the kids were calling "_crunk"._

As I opened the car door to greet him, I felt a familiar, haunting feeling. I paused, looking back up to the sixth floor where our loft was. Elise and Keiko were there, they weren`t alone. Yet I felt the lingering sense that I should have stayed with them.

"Something wrong?"

My trance was broken, and I slipped into the passenger seat, pulling the door shut behind me.

"Just trying to remember if I turned my curling iron off." I smiled, "I think I`m okay. Elise is home."

"Better Ellie burn to death than you, right?" He chortled, and I snorted a "Ha!" in reply. Of course, we were joking, but my eyes pulled upwards to her window as he shifted gears and hit the accelerator.

"What kind of perfume is that?" He asked after a few minutes of driving in silence. I opened my mouth to answer, but was cut me off,

"Cigarette Eau so fresh?" His eyes didn`t leave the road, and the half smile I expected didn`t show on his face. A frown appeared on his delicate features.

I didn`t reply, just bit down on my bottom lip and turned to look out my window at the passing imagery.

"You`ve been smoking a lot lately."

"Nerves." I answered hastily.

"Maybe you should cut back on the coffee then." He mumbled, "I`m honestly surprised your teeth haven`t turned black by now."

"Please, that`s what whitening treatments are for." I fiddled with the sash that cinched the waist on my fitted, beige trench coat. I pulled on the hem next, trying to cover more of my legging covered thighs.

"Oh, and I suppose there`s also a cleaning service for your lungs?" His eyebrows lifted and it was apparent that Daisuke was in the mood for sass today. I was too distracted to remark with sharp words. He was worried about me. What was new?

Everyone worried about me. I just didn`t give a flying-

"Hello?" I guess he was waiting for an answer to his sass, and I snapped out of my mindless, thoughtless trance.

"Just drive, please." I felt too exhausted for any more. I felt anxious enough on a daily basis any way without him breathing fire down my back. I needed to start up therapy sessions again.

Why on earth had I cancelled my appointments anyway?

I felt his long, slender fingers slip between mine as he locked hands with me as he drove.

"I just don`t need you cutting your lifespan in half by a silly habit. We only have a short time together." I remained silent for a few moments, and I felt him shift beside me.

"I love you, Jill."

One of his fingers brushed over my engagement ring as he spoke. I felt something in my stomach flutter, and I shook with fright at the feeling.

Whoever thought it was romantic or pleasant to have "butterflies" was out of their mind. I felt myself growing nauseous right then and there. Though I suppose it was a blessing in disguise. It meant that Daisuke was keeping me on my toes.

Maybe I was just so used to being bored of men that it had become the norm for me, though it had been years since I`d been in an actual relationship.

Actually, I hadn`t ever had a relationship. Only flings.

What was wrong with me, after all? I have low self esteem but I never show beyond the walls of my own sanctuary. I was thin, I made absolute sure of that. I cared about my appearance. What the hell was wrong with me?

"I love you too." My reply was quiet and robotic. I was an affectionate lover, really, I was. Not that I would know what that`s like. The only guys I`d been with weren`t really interested in my affection.

And then there was Daisuke, who loved and cared about me and held my well being over any other superficial desires.

I kicked myself, my need for attention from everyone was so immature and stupid. I could have punched myself in the face for even thinking about being with other men when my freaking fiancé was seated not a foot away.

I leaned my head on his arm and closed my eyes.

This was how things were supposed to be.

/

"Start thinking about a memory that you want to escape to should something happen here," Shuichi hovered over me as I unpacked my violin from its case. He tugged at the sleeve on his blazer, all dressed up for Shiori and Hatanaka`s wedding.

"Then maybe think of one after that should something else go wrong, just try to-"

"And the memory before that, and before that, and before that-I get it." I nestled the wooden instrument under my chin and began to tune the A string. His half smile danced across his lips, but he repressed it as soon as it had appeared.

I had a list of classical wedding pieces that I was to play before the service started. Shiori had actually consulted me about what would be appropriate to play. She left the music for her service to me. I was so proud to be held in such high regard, and I think she knew it, too.

She was happy to see me happy. I usually had trouble seeing other`s true intentions, but with Shiori I knew she could do nothing wrong. She would never hurt me, which is why she was just as much of a mother to me as my birth mother was.

She was never condescending like the doctors that prescribed me medicine, or the counselors that stuck their noses up at me because I was just a stupid girl that had been spoiled to the point of no return.

I had a hard time believing that my chemical imbalance was due to my father buying me nail polish.

I had chosen _Air on the G String_ for Shiori to walk down the aisle to, Shuichi on her arm. He looked content in giving her away, and I was proud of him for being so adamantly ecstatic for her to remarry. He was willing to go to whatever lengths to protect her happiness, after all.

She grinned at me as I did my best to play with grace. The piece wasn`t hard; I had played it at weddings a million times before.

But this was different, I wanted Shiori`s admiration more than anyone else that had paid me to play at their ceremony. She leaned over to Shuichi and whispered something into his ear, and his green eyes slid over to me briefly before he tried to detain another smile.

I felt my heart melt, as I knew Shiori would only speak well of me to her son.

How could I have possibly wanted to erase all of this?

Shuichi took his place next to Hatanaka`s son with the other groomsmen. When I had finished my piece, I sat down behind piano, shuffling through the music for the next song. The ceremony had begun, and I had time to just sit back and give my attention to the people I loved.

It was nice to relive this memory. The atmosphere was so endearing. The wedding was small, mostly just family, friends and coworkers. My father and Elise were sitting among the pews.

More people attended the reception that was hosted in a hotel ballroom downtown.

"Please don`t purge the cake this time." Shiori didn`t hear her son`s words, though she had been sitting across from us at the table. She was busy wiping food off of Junior`s(My personal nickname for Hatanaka`s 'Shuichi') face with her napkin. She and Hatanaka were both laughing loudly at Shuichi`s expense, partly because it was funny but mostly because they were both pretty inebriated from the drinks they`d been served.

"I didn`t purge the cake because I didn`t want to sacrifice the calories," I explained as I forked another bite of said cake into my mouth. It tasted as good as it had in real life, and I told myself that the calories didn`t apply because it was a dream.

"I was sick from all of the alcohol." I winked at my red head before taking a sip from the flute in front of me.

"Maybe you shouldn`t be drinking, then, considering that you`re underage anyway." He moved the glass away from me, and pretended to not be amused by the scowl that had twisted itself onto my face.

"I seriously doubt that I could get drunk in this state."

"You probably can. That champagne is just as real as the pillow your head is resting on outside of this memory."

I choked on the bite of cake that I was in the middle of swallowing and forced myself to spit it up into the napkin I had picked off my lap. I put the cloth down on the table before excusing myself.

"I`m going to find Elise." I grumbled. If the alcohol could get me drunk, the cake could get me fat and I didn`t have time to spend an extra hour at the gym all week to burn it off.

I ran into Ellie on my way to the bathroom. She had managed to drink herself silly with a few of Junior`s extremely attractive (and older) cousins.

"Where`s dad?" I asked, the words coming out of my mouth as if they were on autopilot. Sometimes I felt as if my dreams were controlling me, as a way to keep me on track.

"Probably circle jerkin' it with his employees, why?"

Oh God, how could I have forgotten that drunk Elise was almost as obnoxious as I am sober?

"I have to pee." I rolled my eyes and pushed myself past some of the boys that were crowding the table. Elise was just starting to blossom and I wasn`t going to take the attention away from her.

After I had rid my stomach of its contents, I made my way back to the reception in the ball room. I knew that at some point Shiori was going to force me to dance with both of her sons and I wasn`t excited to have both of them stepping all over me with their big feet.

"Ah, the familiar scent of stomach acid and borrowed Tic-Tacs." As Told By Ginger mused to himself as we took a turn about the ballroom. People watching was always one of our favorite pass-times

"It`s your fault for not telling me the cake was real."

"Nonsense. Oh look, Mother seems to have found a camera."

We stopped and smiled in her direction so that she could take a few snapshots to put in her scrap book.

"She gave me a copy of that photo," I recalled, continuing to pace around the part with my arm linked in his, "It was on my vanity."

"You must have removed it before the procedure."

"No, I don`t remember… Maybe Elise took care of it."

"Don`t let that distress you, there will be more photos, I`m sure." He gave my hand a squeeze. I went to take another step forward, but Shuichi didn`t move with me, and I was jerked back.

I looked up and noticed that his usually intense green eyes were grey and clouded over, as if he`d been blinded.

"What`s wrong?" I asked, tugging on his arm a little. He didn`t budge, and he wouldn`t reply.

"Oh no," I was thrown into an immediate panic, and I started to violently shake the fox demon as hard as I could.

"No, no, no, no," I looked around frantically, and noticed the walls were starting to collapse around us. The hotel was falling apart, and the guests at the reception were scattering, shouting "earthquake" among other incoherent things.

None of which actually happened at Shiori`s wedding.

We were done for already, he was dead and I was reduced to a less conscious state than my mother. Maybe Dad would sever all ties with me as well.

_Jillian, the map—hurry!_

His anxious voice echoed around me as I stood in the middle of the collapsing room. I looked up and saw the chandelier falling from the high ceiling, barreling down, straight for the crown of my head.

_Jill—_

/

** Thanks you those that have followed/reviewed/read.**

**I`m always looking for new reading material, and I`m interested to know what everyone`s favorite fanfics/books are. If you have a second and don`t mind sharing, drop me a PM or leave it in a review, PLZ THANX.**

**Holly.**


	4. Somewhere in Wonderland

/ **Jillian **

"It`s too quiet."

I looked up at the blue haired girl to my right from my curled up position on the ground. Botan and I had been waiting outside of Irima Cave, which I remembered re-titling the _Cave of Wonders. _

"_Botan!"_ I gasped, letting the memory of my previous dream wash over me. We were back farther now, but I was so relived to be alive.

But my boys were inside of that cave, fighting Shinobu Sensui.

She looked at me with confusion, her eyebrows raised from my sudden outburst.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Shuichi… he did go in there, didn`t he?" I asked, praying that he wasn`t brain dead and useless by now. I needed to see him for myself, and I wasn`t about to wait until the end.

Botan nodded, growing more confused as I scrambled to my feet.

I took a moment to touch the sleeve of the soft, blue zip up hoodie I had worn that day. It was the last time I had worn it, as it was about to be ruined in the process of eliminating Sensui and the rest of his fighters.

"Now, Jill, don`t you dare think about going in there." Botan warned. There was nothing she could do to stop me as I jumped the fence before the sprinting over to the opening of the cave.

"Jillian!" She screeched from behind me, "Come back this instant! The boys will murder me!"

I looked back at her, and chucked up the deuces, trying to appear confident in the face of hell itself.

"I`ll be back soon, Bo!" I called over my shoulder before breaking out into another brisk job.

I ran for what seemed such a long time, with the sinking feeling that something had happened. The cave was deep, that I knew. But there was no telling how long it would take me to reach the boys.

Koenma was in here somewhere. He had left some time before. I pleaded silently that I would also find him and the boys.

_You can`t leave me alone in these memories_, _Shuichi,_ I thought to myself.

_I`ve had too many close calls to not have you with me. _

I ran farther in, not able to see my surroundings for the longest time. I felt as if I was stumbling through the dark with no sense of where I was even going, and eventually I felt the cave walls slip from my fingers. I was walking into my own subconscious.

I didn`t have Shuichi with me. I didn`t know how this part of the story went. I had stayed outside with Botan.

But it was too late to go back now.

"Shuichi can you hear me?"

I waited for his words to ring through the darkness, but I only heard silence. I panicked, trying to call for him again.

"Shuichi, please tell me you`re okay," My words were softer now, with less of an echo to them. As long as we were both still alright on the outside, then maybe we had another chance at this.

I tried to remember how I had mapped out the memories that stood out in my mind. The night he left, that day when he`d come back, Shiori`s wedding, and before that…. The terror of Shinobu Sensui and the imminent threat he held over our heads.

I needed to find a better memory from before this moment. Something happy, something defining to the two of us.

But I couldn`t hardly remember my own God damned name at that point.

_I need to wake up_, I thought to myself. I needed to get out of here, but I needed to know that Shuichi was okay. I could have fried his brain. What would happen if my present self were to awaken with a strange man in her bed?

Surely Shuichi would have a problem, not only with the present day Jillian, but he would have to answer to an aggravated Elise, and she was not friendly when provoked, as memory serves.

I prayed that he had gotten out of the loft, that he had caught on and thrown himself out of this Wonderland.

Soon enough, I felt the familiar feeling of falling backwards from atop a rather tall building.

* * *

**IV - SOMEWHERE IN WONDERLAND**

**All the words in my mouth** **that the scene deemed unworthy of letting out **  
**banded together to form a makeshift militia **  
**and burrowed bloodily through my tongue and my teeth.**

Elise was standing in the doorway of our bathroom with Keiko at her side. Ellie looked cautious, and Keiko had her hands covering her mouth, eyes wide with fright. I propped myself up on my elbows, and noticed that I had broken into a cold sweat, and my sheets were _soaked_.

Elise tip toed across the carpet and reached her hand out to my forehead.

"Holy shit," She looked down at me, and I was beginning to get freaked out. As my feet hit the floor, I felt the nausea tidal wave over me, and I literally shoved Keiko out of the way so that I could bend over the toilet to retch.

I felt my body trying to repel me from the inside out and I couldn`t understand why. I felt Elise`s hands pull my hair our of my face. She pressed on my back, trying to comfort my shivering body.

"Are you pregnant?!" Ellie laughed over me, and I almost choked on the dinner I had eaten.

That could have been it. Usually I never ate after seven thirty, and we hadn`t been served our food until half past eight.

No, that wasn`t it. Had I had that much to drink?

I froze, tasting something that I hadn`t had for a long time.

Champagne and cake.

"You ate too much at the restaurant, didn`t you?" Elise presumed. I nodded, avoiding my own questions. I needed to brush my teeth. I needed to wash my sheets.

After I cleaned myself off, I threw the bed sheets into the wash bin and started the load. I had an extra pair of sheets I could put on my bed, but I couldn`t sleep, so I just decided to wait up for them so that I could throw them in the dryer.

I showered and changed into some leggings and a sweatshirt, letting my hair dry as I laid out on he sofa. I watched as the sun slowly began to rise through the windows.

The sick feeling passed soon, but my head was killing me.

I was still completely confused. I ordered a salad at the restaurant and we drank wine. I hadn`t had champagne.

I did my best to nurse my headache for the couple hours I had before I needed to be in class, but it didn`t subside. I felt as if my brains had been run over by a semi.

I couldn`t handle class. I was skipping.

My conscious argued me, telling me that I was acting like I had in High School and that it was just a little headache. I didn`t care.

I made breakfast for Keiko and Elise and helped them get ready for school, pressing their uniforms for them and helping with their hair.

Keiko gave me a tight hug before bidding me adieu, promising that she would be back again very soon. I had always really liked the girl. She was gentle and shy, a contrast between Elise and myself. I preferred people with calm personas, as they were relaxing, when my life felt like pure chaos.

/

The Medical School was just down the street from the Fine Arts University. I had a counseling appointment scheduled. I didn`t feel much like going, but I knew that it was much needed. I felt a sickness in my stomach as I sat in the waiting room of the student clinic, waiting for my name to be called like the bell toll of my own funeral. I hated going to counseling because it was an audible reminder of exactly how messed up I am in the head.

I nudged the violin case that I had placed on the floor next to me with my foot. It had been the only therapy I had needed for the longest time.

I didn`t know what had come over me, but sometimes my world had started to seem so dark all of a sudden. These night terrors were really messing with me, whatever they were. With the medication I was admittedly a lot better from the years before, but I still had my moments. The doctor said that sometimes talking things out was the best medicine.

I would have a better time believing what the doctor said if he hadn`t also told me to go tanning.

"Beckett, Jillian." My name was called by a smooth, soothing tone. I lifted my eyes and met them with vivid green as the color drained from my face. Surely this wasn`t my counselor, I panicked. Many medical students had apprenticeships of some sort that helped pay for their tuition, as I did for the Suzuki department and the dance department. I could feel my stomach turn as I collected my things and followed my neighbor down a hallway.

It was the red head from the other day. He waited in the doorway to the hall leading to all of the other offices, smiling serenely at me, as if he hadn`t tried to hit on me just the other day. I pressed my lips together and stood quietly, collecting my things. This would certainly be interesting.

He lead me into a small room with a desk and two armchairs set across from each other. On the desk there was a name plate labeled Shuichi Minamino.

"Have a seat." He shut the door behind me and gestured to one of the arm chairs.

"Uh-" I stammered awkwardly, he looked up at me as he sat across from me in the other chair with his clipboard, "You aren`t a real counselor, are you?"

"Oh no," He chuckled lightly, "I`m just an interviewer. I ask you questions and based off of your answers the counselors will decide on who you`re going to be seeing."

"Alright," I sighed with relief.

"This session is going to be recorded because I`m only an apprentice. No one will hear this unless there is a complaint issued against me. Everything you say here will not be released to anyone outside of the clinic staff unless I`m inclined to believe you are a threat to yourself of others." His words sounded mundane, repetitive, as if he`d said them a million and one times that day.

I gulped, still a little nervous. I was about to tell quite possibly one of the most attractive and unsettling of all the men I had ever encountered exactly how fucked up I was, no, I was not ready. I pursed my lips together, but slowly nodded anyway, just wanting to get things over with.

"I see that you`re currently taking 40 milligrams of citalopram." He stated, looking up at me, "Can you tell me the difference of how you feel from before you were on the medication to now?"

"I…" I looked over at the picture on his desk. It was a photo of him and who I assumed to be his mother. She was older, middle aged with dark hair. Her facial structure similar to her son. Her eyes were warm and her smile was sincere, something you don`t see in professional photographs. The difference between the two was eerie, as he seemed to be of a complete different being from the woman in the picture. Like strangers with similar structure.

I met his eyes again before quickly looking to his feet before continuing,

"Before the medication I was extremely oversensitive to every emotion that I was feeling at the time." I began, casually. I had repeated the same words to my counselor back home, "Usually negative feelings. I was diagnosed with chronic depression, and then Borderline Personality Disorder, as I had most of the symptoms… and then some."

"What were your symptoms?" He started writing.

"Exhaustion, crying spells, anxiety, aches, suicidal thoughts." I said quickly, nearly slurring my words, I should have added, "Recklessness, suicidal tendencies and behavior, drug abuse, self-mutilation." But I refrained, letting the words dry out on the tip of my tongue as I breathed the air of the room.

"There was also something else I wanted to discuss," The boy looked up at me curiously, almost as if he expected what I was about to say.

"I keep having these dreams, only I can never remember anything about them. I just keep waking up, screaming, and," I paused, placing a hand on my forehead, remembering this morning,

"I am scaring myself, and my sister, whom I have guardianship over."

We made eye contact again, and his eyes held a somberness I didn`t know they were capable of. I figured this guy to be the arrogant type, unable of really giving a damn about the fickle emotions of crazies like myself.

Shuichi wrote for a few moments quietly. I felt the blood rushing back to my face as the silence continued on. I let out a quick sigh, laughing it out like a chuckle stopped short from nerves. He looked up, expecting me to say something, cry, freak out, I suppose.

"Is there anything else you`d like to talk about?" He asked.

"No," I scoffed, "No, I think I`ve embarrassed myself enough for one day." I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, parting it on the opposite side and letting my hair waterfall over, shading one of my eyes with gold strands.

We sat in silence for a few seconds as he continued writing. I was going insane trying to figure out why he had tried to ask me out the other day.

"Don`t worry, you have no reason to be embarrassed. Your secrets are safe with me." The amused look on his face didn`t comfort me in the slightest. I needed to get the hell out of there.

At least this was only the screening process, and after this, I would never have to deal with the arrogant ginger again.

He quietly lead me to the exist, keeping a few paces ahead of me. I stared at him from behind, my gut begging me to ask him what he had wanted from me the other day at the studio.

He hadn`t mentioned it. Maybe he had wanted to forget about it, to be professional. That had to have been it. This man was too smooth to not care about having respect in his work place.

For some strange reason, I was trusting him.

Usually upon something such as this happening, I would have done a 180 and walked right back out of the Student Wellness Center, but for some reason I felt comfortable enough to stay.

"Enjoy the rest of your day, Ms. Beckett."

I looked up into those dazzling, green eyes one last time. I didn`t smile, but I didn`t sneer either. I kept my expression blank, making sure that no matter how perceptive he had to have been, Minamino Shuichi from Counseling Services would not read what I was thinking about him.

"Have a nice day, Minamino-san." I nodded, and rounded the corner, out of the office. I sighed with relief, fanning my face with my hands as I had suddenly felt a rush of blood hit my cheeks.  
Never again, I told myself, I would never have to see him again.

/

**This chapter is about three pages shorter than I had liked my other chapters to be, I apologize. Please try to enjoy it anyway.**

**-Holly**


	5. The Outsider

"And just what the hell do you think you`re doing?"

_Shit,_ I thought as I ran right into Master Genkai.

Kaito and Yana stared at me, shocked to see me as well. I paused for a moment, weighing my options. I noticed there was a small boy in Kaito`s arms. I remembered him from before, apparently he had lost his life to Shuichi when playing a video game.

"Just going for a run!" I snapped before sprinting past them, praying Genkai wouldn`t stop me.

"You fool! Get back here this instant!" She rasped after me, but none of them made a move to capture me. Maybe I was able to somewhat control what went on in these dreams, as long as I could alter the direction they were going in, I could bend and twist a few other things as well.

Reassured that I was going the right direction, I let my calves burn like fire as I ran, determined to see him for myself. I needed to see him.

I came up on Koenma soon after, who was also bitter about my presence in the cave. I stopped to walk with him for a couple minutes, unafraid of him like I was Master Genkai.

"I would feel more comfortable if your sister were here in your place," He looked down at me his violent, brown eyes, looking a little too serious for the toddler that I was familiar with. I had seen him in his adult form before, but it still seemed so foreign to me.

He was more comfortable with Elise because she had spiritual powers.

My memories had been vacated of that information as well.

"You just got a little crush on Ellie," I teased, briefly recalling a his secret affair with Elise.*

He tried to give me an intimidating glare, but I only giggled at it.

Koenma was hardly intimidating after watching him romp around in a diaper.

"I`ll see you there, Coco!" I waved before breaking into another sprint forward.

Full speed ahead, I thought to myself, ignoring the Prince`s shouts after me, demanding me to head back, just as Genkai had.

But that just wasn`t going to happen.

* * *

**V - THE OUTSIDER**

**I look myself in the face**

**And whisper "I'm in the wrong place,"**

I ran for another fifteen minutes before I heard a voice drabbling on and on, irritatingly shrill and …familiar. It was a voice I had always compared to Ursula from _The Little Mermaid. _

When I reached the opening in the cave, I saw them. Toguro, who was supposed to have been dead, and standing with his back to me, Shuichi.

"Enough," He hissed, his voice sounding more dangerous than I ever remembered it to be. I wanted to run to him and hold him tightly, make for certain that it was real.

Well, as real as dreams could be, I suppose.

And then Shuichi spoke words that I knew were coming from somewhere else inside of him, from Youko,  
"This ends here, you soulless fuck."

I don`t know why I found it hilarious, maybe I was just so overjoyed to see that he wasn`t a vegetable.

Then again maybe something was off, Shuichi had just dropped a bomb from his mouth.

Hiei shifted, turning slightly to look back at me through narrowed eyes. He wasn`t pleased with my being here, afraid I would distract the raging fox demon. I pressed myself up against the cave wall.

_You shouldn`t be in here, Jillian. This is strictly materializing from my memory._

"Oh, welcome back," I whispered to the voice echoing through my head.

He was back. I cracked a smile at the thought. He was okay.

_It was a close call, but I managed to escape from your subconscious. _

"This shit is sketch, Shu,"

I looked out across the water and saw Kuwabara, bound in a boat, floating on a lake under the gaping black hole that I assumed was the tunnel to the Makai. Demons threatened to escape through it, and I felt my stomach drop.

The view from outside the cave was much more pleasant.

"Hahaha!" The shrill cackle of the elder Toguro felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to my ear drum,

"Bring it on! I`m way stronger than last time," God, when would this creep die?

"I can regenerate my body forever and absorb any conceivable power! I`m invincible! And I`m taking your pathetic abilities next!"

I held back the laugh that formed in my throat. Watching this unfold was a joke, considering that I knew the ending in the back of my mind. He would die like all of the other sorry fucks in the cave that dared to challenge Yusuke and the boys.

Shuichi, his back still to our group, lifted his arms and projected a cloud of smoke from his hands. Some sort of trick he had up the sleeves of his uniform. Soon the cloud was big enough to obscure the two of them, and then some.

"Smoke?!" Yusuke, angered that he wouldn`t be able to watch what was happened, "I can`t see them at all, it`s too thick."

Toguro cried from inside the smoke. His end looming from behind the fog. I had nothing but confidence in Shuichi after watching him fight in the Dark Tournament.

Toguro started shrieking profanities, commanding for Shuichi to die.

"Damn it! What the hell`s happening in there?!" Yusuke was growing anxious. Hiei only stood, keeping calm and trusting in his comrade.

"Kurama told us to back off, but if something went wrong…"

"Wait," Hiei lifted a finger to the left. A figure appeared as the smoke began to slowly ebb.

"Kurama!" Yusuke, finally relieved to see his friend in tact, finally calmed.

Shuichi, with a hard look on his face, returned to the group,

"He`s finished."

"He is?" Yusuke looked back to the smoke, "Wh-but-then who`s Toguro fighting?"

The smoke continued to clear, revealing a misshapen looking plant, it`s tendrils wrapped around the elder Toguro, who was talking to himself.

"_The Tree of Wicked Thoughts_ is a parasite that traps its prey with illusions," Shuichi explained, his expression relentless of the kill he had just made,

"I planted the seed when I sliced Makibara`s head off."

I had seen him fight before, but every time wasa little unsettling for me. He didn`t rage on the outside when he was angered, he kept calm, like a maniac. He swallowed that anger and channeled it carefully and precisely until he found the cruelest form of revenge that he could.

"So the smoke wasn`t for blinding Toguro," Hiei observed, "But to keep the Tree of Wicked Thought`s illusions from spilling to the outside."

"Yes," Shuichi answered, turning back to the work of art he had created out of Toguro.

"Damn you… why…" Toguro hissed, "…Can`t I kill you…?"

I could feel the temperature of the room drop as Shuichi described Toguro`s fate without any remorse or pity for the creature, though I`m sure he didn`t deserve it.

"The Tree of Wicked Thoughts won`t let go until its prey dies. But Toguro will keep healing himself… He can`t even escape by killing himself. He`ll remain trapped in that illusion, fighting my shadow for all eternity."

I cringed, sucks to suck, Toguro.

Shuichi drew closer to the tree, speaking directly to the trapped victim he had ensnared,

"You aren`t even worthy of death`s embrace."

It was sort of funny, all of the shit I could put him through, and he could have easily tortured me as he did this monster. I wondered if he ever wanted to set a wicked tree on me. I`m sure the thought tempted him.

His green eyes flashed to me, and they narrowed.

_You`re in trouble now._

His voice echoed through my mind.

What?

_It seems that my subconscious is not synced up with me, I`m only watching from outside of my form. That version of myself is oblivious to the fact that this is a dream._

Oh, God damn it,

"Is there a reason you`ve joined us, Jillian?" He asked me in his threateningly calm vocie, and I froze, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand. I was screwed.

Yusuke and Mitari turned and spotted me, along with Hiei, who had known I was there the entire time.

"Another suicide attempt, no doubt," Hiei spat, I scowled at him, making a mental note to mess with him later, could prove interesting.

Shuichi still stared, unsure of what to do. The other boys turned back to Sensui and her Itsuki.

"Hey!" Yusuke shouted to them, "You said you`d free Kuwabara if we beat him. You can try to stop us, but we`re taking him back one way or another."

His tone was deadly for a fourteen year old. Yusuke always seemed so much older than his age should have portrayed.

Sensui smirked, "Relax, I`ll keep my word."

"Why are you here?" Shuichi rounded on me, looking unnerved to say the least. My lips pursed together, and I looked up at him, trying to think of something to say that he wouldn`t automatically throw me in the crazy house for.

"I just-I thought maybe you were hurt, and I panicked so I-"

"You need to turn back this instant, Jillian. Don`t you dare come back into this cave, regardless of what happens." I tried not to show any fear, though I was completely terrified of Shuichi`s bad side.

"Go home. Go find Shiori-just get out—"

"What?!" Yusuke shouted suddenly, and we all turned to see Kuwabara had been returned to our side of the playing field, safe and sound.

And in that moment, as Shuichi had been caught off guard, I slipped into a blackness.

Only it wasn`t the blackness that I had felt when I was coming out of a dream, it was more tangible than that. This blackness wouldn`t elude me to the morning light.  
This type of blackness was going to take control of my fate.

Sure enough, I found myself on the other side, under the arm of Itsuki.

"Jillian!" I heard Yusuke shouting angrily at me as I tightly closed my eyes.

Take me back to before this happened. Take me back, I thought, take me back to a previous memory.

I tried to remember the day before they had gone on this frolic through Mushiyori City and et cetera. I thought back.

My dance recital a couple days before. I tried to remember.

_That won`t work,_

And why not?! I panicked, opening my eyes to meet them with the other five boys, three of which looked uncomfortable as hell as they watched me.

_You can`t alter a dream course you don`t know the end to that drastically. _

This is your fault, I thought. There was no reply. He was probably mulling over some sort of idea or plan so that I could escape and let fate take over as it had before.

"How did she even get over there?"

"Probably the same way that I did," Kuwabara went into the description of how he had been grabbed and pulled into the same black void that I had been.

And then the ground opened up underneath the boys and swallowed them all, and my mouth fell to the ground.

Urameshi was spat back out, however, confused and fed up.

"I`ll handle the others," Itsuki spoke to Sensui just before putting his hands on me, lifting me over his shoulder. I didn`t struggle, my fate would be decided by the dream.

"Gah! Jillian!" Yusuke panicked even more as Itsuki dragged me down into the water.

I didn`t feel like I was drowning when I went under, probably because I was breathing soundly on the outside. I was still shaking in fear though, the man`s shoulder digging into my stomach making me a little nauseous.

We disappeared into the depths of the water, and reemerged, dry and floating in another dimension.

"This was obviously planned," I looked up and saw Shuichi and the other boys floating among the debris,

"Someone must be controlling it."

"Indeed, the floor man is my pet." Itsuki spoke, and I was released into the dimension, floating aimlessly for a moment. I went to swim through the lack of gravity, but a pair of _floating arms _held me back.

I was repulsed as I noticed blinking eyes covering the random arms.

"Sick!"

"Oh hey guys," Kuwabara waved at me, a cheesy grin spreading from ear to ear,

"Jill`s here! Hey, Jill!"

"Eheheh," I laughed nervously, frozen in the grasp of the floating hands. I was tensing up, too grossed out by them to move.

"So you`re a demon as well?" Shuichi asked Itsuki, eyes shifting back and forth between the two of us.

"I am the 'Dark Stroke', Itsuki." He explained.

"LET`S GO ASSHOLE!" Kuwabara bolstered, ready to dive into a fight head first, "I`m guna kick the crap outta you!"

"Take it easy," Itsuki held a hand up, "I have no desire to fight with you. I only want to watch their fight."

Curiouser and curiouser, Shuichi didn`t even try to hide his puzzled expression.

"We may be enemies, but we each care for one of the men out there, right?"

"Pfft! Alright, then tell me something," Kuwabara barked, "What do you even like about Sensui?"

Itsuki smiled softly and replied,

"Everything."

I have a strong feeling this guy is about to put me to sleep, more so than I had been already.

"His strength, his weakness, his purity, his ugliness, his sadness. I love everything about him that makes him human."

Oh, gag me. I noticed Kuwabara`s face accurately described how big of a shit I didn`t give at that moment for Itsuki`s undying love for the meatball that Yusuke was about to have a showdown with.

"When we first met, I was his enemy. Whispers in the darkness said, _No creature that meets Sensui returns alone... _He was unbelievable strong, and killed every demon he fought."

He paused,

"Yet he didn`t kill me."

Well congratulations, I thought to myself, did he want a metal?

Itsuki babbled on about how they bonded over some lame television show before continuing,

"It was funny. That one trivial sentence made me seem human to him, yet he was completely numb with shock. He told me, 'There`re a lot of different kinds of demons, huh?'."

"We chatted for about an hour, but when he said that, his face suddenly looked much younger, and more innocent."

The silent conversation between Kuwabara and I was cracking me up, and I was unable to focus on the sappy tale of how Itsuki met Sensui.

Every few words we would roll our eyes, throw our heads back in exhaustion, give Itsuki dirty looks and then shake silently, trying to repress the laughs. I wish I hadn`t erased Kazuma, he was such a fun loving punk.

"An ultra-elite assassin, with a face as pure as the driven snow. I felt like I`d found a lover and a time bomb."

Kuwabara glared at him seriously this time,

"You`re starting to sound a little twisted…" He grumbled, a nervous sweat pouring down his face.

"You could have stopped Sensui, from turning out the way he did," Shuichi`s voice was accusing and angry, I`d heard that tone before.

"Possibly," Itsuki mused to himself, "But I wanted to watch him degenerate as the world hurt and tainted his soul."

I opened my mouth to interject with an insult, but Kuwabara cut me off,

"Son of a—"

"Imagine a cute little girl," Itsuki went off on another loony spiel, "Who believes babies come from the stork, growing up to be in porno movies. Things like that delight me. I watched as Sensui realized the ugliness inside humans and changed into what he is now."

"That is _fucked up_, Itsuki." I pointed out.

"Seems to me like you`re at the source of all this," Kuwabara trembled with anger as he growled low at the demon, "You fucking psycho… you make me wanna puke."

"Don`t take it the wrong way, I never forced Sensui into anything. I am but his shadow. I watched him change and helped him achieve his goals. And will continue to do so."

"No," Shuichi interrupted, eyes maintaining that terrifying calm as he spoke

"We`re going to kill you, right here."

I shivered. I finally realized what made that so creepy.

When he gets like that, he sounds like one of those children from the horror movies. They look completely innocent, and usually end up possessed by the devil or have some disturbing secret.

Or maybe because he had been possessed by a demon his entire human life.

_It wasn`t a possession. _

"I thought you would be smart enough to realize you can`t," Itsuki jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the endless void of debris behind him, "Kill me, and you`ll be stuck in the Floor Man`s stomach forever."

"You could at least let the girl go," Kuwabara argued in my defense, "She didn`t have any part of this."

"She`s probably less of a nuisance that way." Hiei`s monotone made me chortle a little. He was right, but seriously, was it possible to die of being disgusted?

_The shadow hands are the least of your problems._

Oh, shut _up_, Shuichi.

The other Shuichi was watching curiously as I didn`t even bother to go against our subconscious. Completely confused, he spoke,

"Probably, but if you would please release Jillian, anyway,"

"No harm will come to her. She`s merely here for crowd control."

I was released from the shadow hands anyway, and pulled next to the beautiful Itsuki, frozen in place without being held onto by anything,

_Should have brought your riot gear._

Was that supposed to be funny?

_Easy, Jillian. It`s just a dream._

"We`re going to stay here and watch."

I looked to Shuichi with a disgruntled look, to which he returned. He was right, I shouldn`t have barged in there. I knew it wasn`t safe, that I would get in the way. But in reality, I guess I hadn`t. I had stayed outside, waited with Botan and the others.

I didn`t have to wonder for long as to why I couldn`t move, for my vision began to blur and falter, the backs of the boys coming in and out of focus. It was that time again.

/ **Jillian**

Elise was on the sofa when I returned home from lessons, watching the telly in her pajamas with a bowl of sugary cereal resting on her stomach. I frowned upon seeing her like this.

"I won`t spill, relax," She sighed, sitting up and putting the bowl on the coffee table.

"That`s not the reason I was frowning." I replied in a sing song voice, heading into the laundry room to pull the clothes out of the dryer.

"You look like a bum."

She snorted a laugh at this, and shut off the television, shutting herself in her room. I heard the hair dryer go off and on a few times, meaning that she was styling it with a round brush, curling the ends in the same direction.

Usually she only did this for special occasions, so naturally, I planned on interrogating her on her plans for the evening.

Especially if it meant I would have a few hours alone with Daisuke.

I was in the middle of ironing Elise`s uniforms when she came walked in, looking for a blouse through the dirty hamper.

"Elise… what are you doing?" I watched, horrified as she pulled out an already worn sweater from the hamper.

"No, no don`t wear that!" I shouted after her as she escaped from the room.

"I don`t have time to wash it, Jillian!"

"Don`t wear that-it`s dirty."

"It is not, I wore it once. Doesn`t even smell."

I froze, standing in her doorway as I watched her pull the wrinkly material over her face.

"….Wear one of mine."

I didn`t like sharing my clothes, I was very careful with them. Each was a valuable asset to my wardrobe. Elise`s eyes lit up, and her mouth dropped open in joy,

"Really?!" She ripped off the sweater and chucked it across the room before barreling through our bathroom and into my bedroom, scampering for my dressing room.

I felt my stomach turn into knots as I followed the eager teenage girl. She was already looking at the shelves where my favorite sweaters set, organized by color and texture.

She chose a thin, black knit to go over her skinny cut, black slacks, and then begged me if she could borrow my brown riding boots to wear over them.

"Where do you think you`re going, anyway?"

"Girl`s night with Keiko," She replied, picking a tube of lipstick off of its tray, applying a bright, cherry red. It jumped out compared to her light hair and complexion.

"You look really cute."

"Not as cute as you." I had heard these words a million times from her. I only rolled my eyes and picked up after her, wiping the tube of lipstick off with a tissue before putting it back on its tray

/

"Jill!"

I poked my head out from the laundry room to see Daisuke entering my apartment. I smiled, waving at him before I finished folding the shirt that was in my hands.

"I`ll be there in a minute," I called out to him, reaching for another.

Of course, he was too quick. As I was bent over to pull more clothes from the bin, I felt his toned arms wrap around my waist. I was pulled from the little laundry room, giggling the whole way.

"Come on, Cinderella, it can wait."

He smelled comforting, like the sea. His cologne was light, transparent, and had marine notes in it.

He was still dressed in his work clothes, a dress shirt and slacks with a tie. His sleeves were rolled and his blazer was draped over the back of the sofa.

When I was released from his embrace, I skipped over to the sofa and went to hang said blazer in the closet.

"Your food is going to get cold." He laughed, and pulled a couple of take out boxes from the paper bag sitting on the counter. I returned to the kitchen area and sat myself at the counter across from where he was standing. He handed me the box of rice and vegetables.

We ate in silence for a while, making little comments here and there.

For the most part we were a simple couple.

His brown hair, usually gelled back hadn`t been touched. Today he let the tousled chestnut waves lay, parted to the slide slightly. His hair was starting to lay in his eyes, he needed it cut.

"Have you chosen a date yet?" He asked, as I was swallowing my food. I had to do everything in my power to keep from choking as I realized that he was referring to the date of our _wedding_.

"No, I`ve been really busy," I immediately started blathering, and he looked down at me thoughtfully at this, innocent, brown eyes filling with negative thoughts.

"Daisuke, I`m sorry, I,"

"It`s alright, if you want to wait." His tone was defeated, and his eyes stared down at the food he was picking at with his chopsticks. I shook my head and reached across the counter to grab his arm.

He laid his hand over mine and looked back up at me, with the look of someone that had just been rejected.

"I don`t know what I`m doing, Daisuke," I felt my eyes stinging with tears, and I really hadn`t meant to get emotional. He looked unsure, afraid to comfort me, and at the same time, afraid to not comfort me.

"I`m sorry," I folded my arm back into my chest, "I forgot to take my medicine. I`m going a little crazy." I murmured, and I fled to my bathroom to find the little peach colored tablets that I had laid our for myself.

I tossed back the first one, and when I brought the glass of water down from my face, I looked to my fiancé through the reflection of the bathroom mirror. He was standing in the doorway with those wide, hurt eyes.

"I don`t think you know what you`re dealing with, kid," I told him, holding the next tablet in the palm of my hand so that he could see it.

He was silent as I tossed the next one back, and then went to fix the mascara that had smudged from when I had started to tear up.

"Elise told me about the dreams."

I stared at him in shock as he continued to speak,

"You haven`t been acting normal, the smoking, the nerves. Something`s wrong. Now you don`t want to marry me—"

"I _do_ want to marry you," I turned to face him, looking up at him. He didn`t believe me.

I had to make him believe me.

"Jillian," He reached for the hands that I had slid up his chest, locked behind his neck,

"You aren`t ready for this. It`s okay. I can wait."

"No, it can`t wait," Even my tone scared me, "Just let me…"

I leaned up and pressed my lips to his as I pulled him down onto mine. I kissed Daisuke so hard that if he had been any of the boys I had went to high school with, he would have needed to change his pants.

"Can we just talk about it," He breathed when we parted, and I went in again, full force. I needed him to know that I loved him.

But I felt like I was also proving something not only to him, but to myself. I needed to love Daisuke. This was the only stable thing I had in my life, the only person that I felt would be there for me until the very end. I needed that safety net.

His hands wrapped firmly around my wrists, and he pulled them down, staring intensely at me from under his long eyelashes.

"Jillian, stop avoiding me." He commanded. I crumbled immediately, and he gestured to the living room, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as he guided me out of the bathroom.

We sat on the sofa, side by side, quiet for a moment,

"Do you want to talk about them?" He was being cautious his arm resting on the back of the sofa behind my head. I leaned into him, burying my face into his chest.  
"It`s all nonsense, really," I began, "I hear a voice, it`s familiar. I don`t know who it belongs to, but I trust it, even if it always leads me to trouble." I didn`t need to look up at Daisuke to know that he was taking every single one of my words into deep consideration. He was an excellent listener.

"I feel grief when they end, as if someone close to me has died. I scream until my throat is sore, and I wake up, or Elise will come and get me. I scare myself into cold sweats."

"I think you`re stressed." He seemed a lot calmer now, his comforting logic finally setting in,

"I shouldn`t have pressured you about the wedding. I know you`re ready. I`m sorry."

"May."

He looked down at me, and squeezed my shoulder with the arm that had been draped around the back of the couch.

"Hmm?"

"I want to get married in May."

"Alright," I could hear him smiling contently as he spoke, "And Jillian?"

"Hmm?"

"Where the hell did you learn to lip-lock like that?"

/


	6. Droppin' Dimes

I`d awakened from a deep sleep to the sound of light snoring, and a warm breath on the back of my neck. Daisuke`s body heat was intense, burning my skin from under the down comforter. He had been lying so close to me, his arms forming a casing around my body.

It had been the first night that I hadn`t awakened in a panic, or from Elise busting into my room to wake me while I was screaming in my sleep. There was no cold sweat.

Only warmth, comfort. I didn`t budge, I liked being held. Something about his strong arms wrapped around me so protectively made me feel secure, like I was enough for him. No more, no less.

Maybe that was the reason I had fallen for Daisuke, he knew exactly how to make me feel wanted, loved.

I looked over at the clock, watching the minutes turn as we laid, basking in the bright sunlight that was coming through the window. I never shut the shades, I rather enjoyed the light. It woke me up naturally, made me feel like there was something to get up for, even if it was just to spend my day in the Fine Arts building.

They say that people with personality disorders don`t dream as much as those without, but I`m alright with that. My dreams, though I can never remember a single one, terrify me. I preferred the solemn blackness; I had grown accustomed to it. There was no use trying to make sense of my night terrors, as I had no tangible information to offer my counselor. We just went in circles, she repeated facts about my illness that I had heard a few hundred times before.

I sighed, irritated with myself. At least I had gotten a break with Daisuke staying the night. He didn`t stay often, as we were unmarried and he didn`t feel like it was right to live together before we were wed. Sometimes he broke his honor code, though, whenever one of us couldn`t keep it in our pants any longer.

I looked down at my ring again, at that big rock he`d paid out the ass for. I had never mentioned that I needed that size of a diamond. Daisuke just assumed that I was materialistic because of my lifestyle. I didn`t expect the boy to buy my love. I wouldn`t expect anyone to. If they did, it would make them no better than my father, who had been incapable of showing me any proper affection or attention.

I was surprised that I had grown into the affectionate lover that I had been to Daisuke. I had no one to teach me how to love before now, and it seemed to come so naturally. I greeted love like an old friend instead of the stranger I had always known it to be.

Still, something felt missing between those sheets, like there was more waiting for me somewhere, someone I hadn`t given a chance. Maybe someone I would meet at the video exchange or the café. Maybe not for a few more years. Maybe not for a decade or two.

I turned, facing the boy. His face looked content, his lips slightly parted, lashes brushing his pale cheeks. I inwardly scolded myself for these reoccurring thoughts that possessed me. If I was enough for him, then he was more than enough for me. I was lucky to have someone like Daisuke, and it`d be inhuman and selfish to break his heart for such a silly reason.

I cupped his face with my hand, and his eyes fluttered open. He drew away from me, frightened. I had startled him for a moment. When his brain registered that it was only me, he calmed down, laying his head back on the pillow. He smiled, bearing the little gap he had between his two front teeth. Up close I could notice the faded freckles that were sprinkled across the tops of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

"Good morning." I greeted him, pressing my lips to his forehead. His hands slid to my side, and he pulled me on top of him. I grimaced for a moment, self conscious of my body, but tried my best to push down the unsettling feelings. We were going to be married for Christ`s sake.

"Do you know what I want to do _right now_?" He asked, lacing his fingers with mine. I just stared down at him curiously,

"What?"

And in that moment I knew that I had made the right choice. My hair was a mess, and I wasn`t wearing makeup. I probably looked like a disaster, and yet, he still looked up at me, a crown of brown locks formed around his face as he offered me a cheesy, goofy smile.

"I want to marry you."

* * *

**VI - DROPPIN' DIMES**

**Dancing all alone to the sound of an enemy`s song, I'll be lost until you find me.**  
**Fighting on my own in a war that's already been won, I`ll be lost until you come and find me here, oh glory.**

It was fifteen minutes until the barrier to the Ningenkai would be torn open, I watched the familiar scenery unfolding before me. Jillian and the others remained in the floor man, being held captive as Yusuke was left to fight Sensui.

I hadn`t been returned to the my human form in my dreaming state. It was more of an out of body experience that I was experiencing. What else, it had seemed that Youko had been… separated from me. I could no longer feel him lurking in the dark corners of my subconscious, leaving me to wonder if that was who was left inside the shell known as Shuichi Minamino. At first I`d thought that I was just watching myself from the memories I had left. I`d been mistaken, and I had kept the truth from Jillian.

Youko had escaped into Jillian`s body to preserve himself in case my conscious had been lost, trapping him inside an immobile body without my thoughts to keep him company. That was the reason she hadn`t been able to navigate where the memories were going any longer.

He was controlling us now, and going through memories that Jillian had technically already regained wouldn`t benefit anyone.

I would have to find a way to sync ourselves back together in order for our memories to be going in the same direction, if he would let me.

As for myself, I was left powerless and with only my human form left. I was ordinary, no different from Jillian herself. I knew how to control Shuichi`s rei-ki, enabling myself to get thus far without the help of my you-ki. Still, this couldn`t be good for Jillian nor Youko. He could damage the delicacy of the dreaming state further now, and render all three of us brain dead by morning.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of splashing, and my eyes focused in on the fight that was going on outside of the floor man between Yusuke and his foe;

The ripples in the water explained Sensui`s absence. Yusuke had just launched a rock at him, distracting Sensui so that he could deliver several blows to his stomach.

"Hell yeah! That`s the Urameshi Organ Smasher!" Kazuma exclaimed, "I remember when he hit me with that, I couldn`t eat for a week!"

Even though I had no eyes of which to speak in that state, I was aghast with Kuwabara`s abilities to humor me in even the gravest of situations.

When Sensui appeared back out of the water, there was a wave of silence as everyone drank in the sight of the scars that had adorned his body.

"These are all scars I gave myself during my training," He explained to us, "I never got a single one in battle."

Yusuke`s eyes flashed in belief, not doubting his words.

Sensui pulled his ball of energy from the water, and Kuwabara turned to Shuichi`s form and mumbled, "He can still control his energy ball from that far away?"

And in response, I could feel the familiar vibrations of my vocal chords in my throat as he answered the human. I could hear my voice speaking, strange to hear with brand new ears.

"One thing after another…"

I could hardly remember my words from years before, but I knew that I would speak sometime eventually as I looked on. Yusuke was being pummeled with Sensui`s attacks, and his hope was fading fast.

_Yusuke`s fucked, isn`t he?_

I was startled for a moment by the soft voice ringing in my head, her words were almost a whisper.

Temporarily, yes, the detective was _fucked. _And again, I felt the familiar vibrations of my voice box being ransacked by Youko via Shuichi.

_Maybe if they quit talking so much and just started throwing punches we would have a lot more than fifteen minutes left until all hell breaks loose. _

This was also true. Of course, if one had 100 times the amount that Yusuke did in reiki, who wouldn`t spend a little time bragging?

Of course, the quick thinker that Yusuke proved himself to be from time to time, quickly changed his strategy and began to attack the spheres of energy to weaken the blows. Just like him.

_Yusuke is swimming. I`m seriously going to shit my pants laughing over here._

"Did you predict this?" Yusuke shouted, mid front-stroke, "What`s my next move gunna be now?"

I saw Jillian trembling with laughter as she was held by the shadow hands. At least this was distracting her from the bondage.

"Why are you swimming, you crack head?!" Kazuma scolded him from the distance.

"I think you answered your own question." Hiei`s snide comment send Jillian into fits in out heads. She snorted out loud, not able to contain herself.

She began to see the hope in the situation, that anything could be made light if you were surrounded by the right people. Yusuke crawled from the water and roped Sensui in with his drenched shirt. He dragged him down and started to throw loaded punches into the villain.

And amidst all of our internal laughter, Jillian suddenly let out one of her terrified screams that made my blood run cold. I watched tears form in her eyes as she shouted for Yusuke. Had I been in my body, I would have comforted her, shielded her eyes of the fight, something. Though she knew we all conquered Sensui in the end, she had never witnessed the brutality we`d gone through to achieve the endeavor.

Her body trembled in the embrace of the Shadow Hands. She wanted more than anything to wake up, but her body was resisting the urge. She`d been in her deepest sleep state when I`d entered her subconscious, and had succumbed to the lucid dreaming shortly after.

_He just shot Yusuke with a gun… protruding from his arm…_

The voice narrating her thoughts sounded frenetic. It was a wonder the walls of the dream hadn`t tried to enfold our subconscious yet.

The voices of our comrades whirred around us in that unknown dimension as Itsuki began his explanation of Sensui`s seven personalities and his particularities of them. Jill wasn`t listening anymore; just watched Yusuke with dead eyes as he lied on the ground with a hole through his stomach. She couldn`t stop trembling, as if she was in a severe stage of Parkinson`s.

He`s going to be fine, Jillian., I tried to offer her some comfort. We had all gotten out of there very much alive, after all.

I saw her flinch as one of Sensui`s personalities, Kazuya, didn`t hesitate to put several more bullets through Yusuke`s skin. Large, round stars formed in her eyes and the damns of her tear ducts overflowed, pouring the tear drops down her cheeks as she glued her eyes to Urameshi.

She finally looked away when Sensui lifted Yusuke`s face up by his hair, pulling him high enough to point his weapon into the younger boy`s neck as he straddled him.

It`s alright, Jillian. It gets better from here.

_Things could be different this time, _She panicked, _Oh, Yusuke…_

"Stop!"

Still, Jillian looked down, not believing that a distraction had just showed itself in the bowels of the cave, taking on the form of a grave-looking Koenma.

Jillian, _look_, I urged her on.

Slowly, but surely, Jillian lifted her tear-streaked face to the scene and her grey eyes widened in recognition.

Not only of the Prince, but of the petite girl that had stepped out from behind him.

Frail looking and fair-haired, Elise Beckett stood at Koenma`s side as if she were his personal attack dog. Her chin jutted upwards, mouth possessing the usual scowl she bore when she was perturbed. Her character much like a sharper image of Jillian, with eyes that held a blackness to them. There was a darkness that Jillian`s innocent eyes could never possess.

Elise`s slender fingers were wrapped around an arc of white rei-ki, the form of a bow. She was ready to fire at a moment`s notice to protect the Prince, whom she undeniably admired with the utmost dedication and respect.

"Shinobu, enough!" Koenma hissed from behind the pacifier stuck between his teeth, hands balled into tight fists. This Prince wasn`t the coward he typically portrayed himself to be. Either his bravery in the face of the threat was a façade, or he was rightly fit to be a ruler of the Reikai.

"Don`t compound your sins any further," He advised Sensui, trying to use the threat of damnation in the afterlife to unnerve him.

Sensui paused just a moment before he flung Yusuke across the cave, letting him crash through the rough terrain. Jillian cringed as she looked on, and I could feel the pity she held for Yusuke as his body lay crumpled on the cavern floor. More tears brimmed on the edges of her vision. The girl was far too sensitive to be allowed to witness these fights.

The tip of Yusuke`s finger sparked with the possibility of a Rei-Gun attack, but Sensui had foiled his plan to fire it, explaining why he tossed the boy away in the presence of Koenma.

"Not wastin' any chances, eh?" He chuckled at Yusuke, "Yer Shinobu`s successor, all right."

He then turned to the two figures that had recently formed in the opening of the cave, sneering in their direction.

"I would recognize that aura anywhere," He grinned eerily at the pair standing before him,

"How`s that new body treatin' ya?" He mocked Elise, laughing loudly,

"Yer lookin' dainty as hell, Kimura!"

Jillian`s eyes flickered to my human form floating before her, narrowing them suspiciously for a moment before returning them to the confrontation below. Elise`s secret had been kept from Jillian, and she was lost in the conversation playing out.

Elise`s face didn`t falter, she kept her uneasy scowl upon the top layer. It was hard to tell if she was raging on the inside or not, as she had managed to conceal her emotions after so many years.

"Listen up, Koenma. Shinobu`s sleepin'. I`m _Kazuya,_" He pointed his finger at the Prince and continued, "And I ain`t gonna listen to you."

A surge of energy prickled my sensed as a narrow spike appeared in Elise`s other hand, an arrow.

"Don`t get me wrong, though, neither would he. See, all of us agreed on the plan, includin' Shinobu."

…The quiver in my throat returned as my own physical body asked, "By 'all of us' he means the other personalities, right?"

"Correct," Itsuki answered, "As I said, if you include Shinobu, there are seven personalities inside him. Along with his main personality, Shinobu, there are three more that come out during fights, and another three in charge of other aspects. One of them is 'Naru', an emotional crybaby of a girl. She`s very naïve and innocent, and tells me all about her worries and problems, and of course, I`m there to comfort her."

_This is some serious transgender, bisexual love affair shit. _

"She only comes out around me. After Shinobu, she`s my favorite."

"Oh my god, shut _up_! If I hear any more I`m gonna go crazy!" Kuwabara shouted, his hands cradling his head as his eyes twitched in irritation.

"I`m surprised I haven`t met all of you creeps in group therapy," Jillian said aloud, rolling her eyes at Itsuki`s passionate elaborations.

"So Sensui came up with this plan by himself," My throat burned with the hijacked voice box no longer within.

"That`s right. You and I are merely pawns."

"Then get Shinobu out here. I`ve got something to tell him."

I watched Elise closely as she shifter her weight on her feet, putting the arrow to the bow. She was angry, and she wanted revenge against Sensui for torturing her so many years ago and forcing her soul from her original body.

"Whattaya say, Shinobu?" There was a pause as Kazuya listened for his other personality to answer from inside of him, and then, "He don`t wanna talk to ya. Guess he don`t like ya!"

Kazuya giggled to himself, and Elise`s face changed, angrier now. Her teeth had been grinding together behind her scowl the entire time.

"The coward can hear just fine," Elise hissed from beside the Prince, body quivering with anger. She was thirsty for revenge, and wanted to take him out just as much as Urameshi longed to.

Koenma held his arm in front of her, motioning for her to stay put. Neither Koenma nor Elise, even combined, was strong enough to land a chip on Sensui`s shoulder and he knew it.

"Listen to me, Shinobu, it`s not too late. Stop this madness!" Koenma`s advising fell on deaf ears.

"You stupid or somethin'? It`s way too late. The hole`s gotten real unstable… all we gotta do now is wait for it ta open." He explained as he gestured back towards the tunnel filled to capacity with lower class demons, just scratching through the surface to get through.

Koenma plucked the Mafuuken from him mouth as it began to glimmer, exposing the large amount of rei-ki it possessed. Elise`s eyes widened as he held it out before him, the energy it had been giving off disheveling their hair, blowing their clothes back a little.

"If it does, I can seal it with a new, stronger barrier." Koenma offered the binky out, holding it delicately in his fingers, "This is the Mafuuken…"

Elise`s warily watched Koenma as he explained to Sensui how the Mafuuken worked, how he had been storing his reiki in the little ball for hundreds of years. He thought his little toy had the power to overcome Sensui in that moment. She was nervous that he would resort to using the little orb. Her eyes flickered every so often to the ex detective, threatening him with her stare. She didn`t need a reason to want to fight with him, the last thing she needed was grief over Koenma.

"…Unless you kill me or steal it, the hole will be closed, and your plan ruined."

At these words, Elise lifted her arrow to her bow, ready to fire if Sensui was inspired to do either. The energy from the Mafuuken surrounded the two, looking as if it were already forming a protective barrier around them.

Sensui sneered, face darkening, "Damn you… yer serious, aintcha?"

"I`ll let the seven of you talk this over." Koenma went on, "There are only two choices; Keep going with this foolishness, or stop."

"Fine." He hissed at the ruler, and began conversing with his six other personalities silently as he tilted his head backwards, resting his eyes.

Koenma looked back at Elise, requesting that she put her weapon down, however she would not budge. Jillian`s eyes were fixed on her sister, as worried as they had been the last time she`d seen Elise in the face of danger.

She wouldn`t be able to erase this memory from her head. Perhaps this was a good thing. She was still so attached to her sister even in the present world. This is exactly what she needed to see, even if it was not a part of her memory.

When Sensui finally lifted his head, he held a cocky expression, leading Koenma`s to turn grave.

"…Kay, we`re done. And we all agreed."

He lifted his gun-arm and aimed it at the Prince, and grinned, "The game continues, and the next step—"

He was interrupted by the sound of a piercing, high pitched noise that belonged to Elise as she fired her arrow. In scarcely a moment, the girl had barged past Koenma, though he protested for her to get behind him. Should she have gotten in the way of his Mafuuken, Elise would be sealed in the Makai with the both of them.

Instead of obeying the order, she charged Sensui. He had managed to move in time for her to miss any vital organs, the blast from the arrow grazing his left arm, burning a wound into his broad, left shoulder.

"Elise, get out of there!" Jillian shrieked, struggling to break free of the hands binding her. Itsuki turned to her, a small smile upon his lips.

"You`re so emotionally delicate," He mused to her. Kuwabara and Mitarai turned to look at the blue haired demon for a moment,

"You remind me of Naru," He reached out and touched a lock of Jillian`s blonde hair. She looked at him incredulously before drawing back and spitting in his face.

I noticed that Youko had turned for a moment to see if Itsuki would try and punish her for it, but he did nothing.

"So dramatic." Itsuki`s smile widened, eyes twinkling in delight at the emotional reaction he`d gotten from the girl. I heard Jillian`s voice in my head again, protesting to dabble on him any longer. She was too preoccupied by Elise.

"…Get Shinobu out here this instant!" Elise scolded as another needle of light appeared in her right hand. Kazuya looked irritated, as if she`d struck a chord with him.

"The least the coward could do is fight me himself. I want to kill Shinobu, not his idiotic seven personalities."

Sensui only laughed at her as he raised his gun to her,

"You`re like a fucking cockroach, little girl. You just come back after your head`s been cut off. You don`t know when to quit."

He fired at her repeatedly, and Elise tried to avoid some of the shots. She was far too determined for her revenge against Sensui to let him conquer her so easily. She caught a breach in the gunfire and fired off more slivers of rei-ki at him.

And just as she reached for her fifth arrow, Sensui`s bullet fired into her ankle, causing Elise to crumple to the ground with a sharp cry of pain.

Jillian`s cries pierced our ears as she continued to thrash her body about, trying to break free as if she could save her sister from the menace that was Sensui.

"Don`t cry now," Itsuki`s calm voice mocked her, "She`s just a girl."

He reached for her again to wipe a new tear that had been running down Jillian`s face. She didn`t try to fight him, didn`t care whether he had something to say.

However, Youko let out a low snarl from inside his human body as he looked back at the two, threatening Itsuki to back off from the girl. And not only was he getting defensive; Even Hiei eyed Itsuki with a blazing stare.

"That`s her sister you punk!" Kuwabara turned to Itsuki with his hands balled into fists, "I outta pound the shit outta you for treating a girl like that! She didn`t do a damn thing!"

_I want to wake up… _

I heard her faintly whimpering in my head, and I tried to calm her by reminding her that Elise had made it out alive, that we all did.

It`s about to get much better, Jillian, I projected my thoughts to her, just keep watching.

And right on cue, Yusuke interjected in the fight, yanking Elise up by her collar and lifting her to eyelevel so he could scold her for trying to steal his fight.

"And what the hell do you think you`re doing, Goldie Locks?!" He bellowed in her face, spraying her with every word,

"This is my fight! Now get your ass outta here! I don`t have any problem hitting a girl!"

Elise yanked herself from his grasp and shoved him away from her as she tried to lean her weight on her good ankle. She glanced over at the awaiting Sensui with a hatred so tangible you could reach out and hold it.

"This was my fight long before it was yours, Urameshi," Elise pointed at Yusuke threateningly with one of her arrows, "I`ve been waiting for this moment for the last fourteen years!"

"Well I got here first, so go cry about it!"

"YOU IDIOTS DON`T HAVE TIME TO THROW DOWN RIGHT NOW!" Kuwabara shouted down at them, of course there was no way for any of them to hear his comments. Meanwhile, Koenma threw his arm forward, about to deliver the power from the Mafuuken in that moment.

Unfortunately for him, Yusuke noticed and used his speed to knock the binky out of Koenma`s grip, leaving the Prince panic stricken and confused as Yusuke stumbled to catch it from falling into anyone else`s hands.

"Urameshi?!" Kuwabara gasped to himself.

"Idiot! Why did you interfere?!" The ruler shouted down at the slouched over boy that had stolen when he had believed to be the Ningenkai`s only hope.

"Maybe I got a concussion, but the way I remember it, I`m the damn detective and this is my case to solve. If you go wastin' away Mr. Pacifier, that means I failed!" Yusuke turned back to the binky in his palm and cringed in disgust, tossing it in his hand as if it were a hot potato,

"Though it`s nasty that it`s covered in spit!" He shuddered in disgust. Typical Yusuke.

"Same goes for your sorry ass!" He turned to Elise as she wavered on her injured ankle,

"Come on Elise, you know you`re not strong enough to handle this guy," His voice changed, trying to reason with her,

"I`m the captain of this team and I`m ordering you to stand down. Let me beat his ass first, and when I fail, he`s all yours."

Elise`s scowl dissipated and her mouth pressed into a tight line instead before giving Sensui another wary glance.

"I was hoping it wouldn`t need to come to that, but there`s no use in arguing." She gave in, and hesitantly fell back, leaving room for Yusuke and Sensui to finish their battle.

_How does my sister know him?_

I ignored Jillian`s voice, pretending as if I didn`t hear her so that she would drop the subject. Before we had faced Sensui, Elise told us of her past and how she was Shinobu`s partner.

She also told us of his betrayal.

_Shuichi?_

Yusuke turned back to Sensui now, pocketing the Mafuuken,

"Hey! You should thank Elise and Koenma, they bought me some time for some beauty sleep."

"I forgot you inherited that wench`s spirit wave technique. Makes you a real good healer, don`t it? Just don`t give yourself a pat on the back." Sensui replied sarcastically as Yusuke was beginning to get on his nerves.

"Don`t bother with the bull, let`s just get back to killing each other." Yusuke braced himself to charge just as Koenma tried to throw himself after him once more.

"Don`t be ridiculous, you`re no match for him! Give me back the Mafuuken now!"

He reached for the detective`s pocket, but it was to no avail as Yusuke reached for his wrists.

"I`m trying to do this the nice way," Yusuke warned him, and Koenma sneered,

"What`s the alternative? You`re gunna tie me up with your shirt?"

"Not exactly," Yusuke drew his fist back, "Actually it goes a little something like this!" And with one swift hit, he sent the Prince flying across the terrain.

Elise fled to his side, ignoring her injury, and Yusuke turned back, grumbling to himself about how he`d been longing to lodge his fist into the Ruler`s nose for quite some time.

"Now it`s just the way it should be." Yusuke, finally rid of the distractions, stood with his shoulders back and ready to throw every last trick in the bag at Sensui.

"One of you in there said they don`t care about the tunnel now, well that`s exactly how I feel. The world ends, the world survives, I don`t friggin' care. All I care about is that you`re beat."

I snorted inwardly, still not able to rap my head around how pig headed the boy could be at times such as that. I guess that`s what makes him so unstoppable, the pressure never gets to him. He doesn`t feel the weight of the world. If he wins, he wins. If he doesn`t…

Well, he hadn`t lost yet.

"Okay, so uh… Kazuya. You need to change to someone else." Yusuke ordered him, and Sensui gave him a questioning look.

"Who was the guy from before? He`d be fine. But Get someone different out here."

"What the hell`re you sayin?" Kazuya`s gravely voice shouted back at the detective, "Yer fightin' me, punk!"

Yusuke`s lips twisted into a snarl, as they formed some of the last of the few words Kazuya would hear before he switched with another personality.

"I`m sayin' you`re too _weak_ to beat me, asshole."

And with those few words, Yusuke was before Sensui in an instant, ramming a lightning bundle of fists into his abdomen, causing the man to choke up blood with every beating his absorbed.

"…You get it now? Switch to the stronger guy you got. We`ll start the fight over with him, I`ll kick his ass, and this`ll all be over."

After Kazuya had stayed crouched over on the ground for a moment, he began to slowly rise by the balls of his feet, as if he was being pulled by a puppeteer`s strings.

"Who`re you?" Yusuke asked him, awaiting the name of his new foe.

He was smiling pleasantly back at Yusuke, though disheveled he seemed too cool to be of sane mind,

"I`m Shinobu, nice to meet you."

/

**Don`t forget to check out the other two stories that tie into this one, titled _Cradle Robbers_****and _The Girl`s a Straight-Up Hustler_**

**As always, let me know what you liked/disliked/want me to change/what I could do better. **

**Holly**


	7. Sleeping With Giants

"That`s right," Shinobu Sensui smiled at Yusuke as if he they`d been friends for years, "This is the first time that I`ve spoken to you. Actually, it`s the first time in a few months that I`ve come out."

I watched him walk toward Urameshi with his left arm extended.

"Put 'er there," He offered him his hand, and I gaped at his familiarity with the detective after trying to kill him, Koenma, and my little sister.

There is no way this actually happened, I thought aloud to Shuichi, who was floating around without a body in the dreaming state, probably subjecting himself to brain damage.

_Sadly, yes, this really happened, _he replied. I groaned, feeling the soreness from my puffy, red eyes. I had cried so much already, and I had a bad feeling that this was only the beginning of the evening`s events. I cried so much, it`s hard not to when you`re always forced to watch those you love in constant turmoil. Not to mention, there was nothing I could do to help them. I was forced to sit and be vulnerable, in the way, with too many emotions.

Just slap my ass and call me Mary Sue, I thought bitterly, shaking my head a little.

I yipped again when I saw Sensui flip Yusuke onto the floor when he refused to shake his hand. To my horror, he began to stomp the shit out of the boy. I watched blood project from his mouth as he took every foot to the gut with eyes wide with pain. I felt stomach acid rising up in my throat, and I forced myself to shove it back down. I was a wreck.

"Itsuki, get me a new shirt and an arm, please."

Itsuki smirked next to me, and then his eyes flashed with such sincere sorrow, making me long to spit right in his face.

"So sorry to see you go, but orders are orders."

* * *

**VII - SLEEPING WITH GIANTS**

**Oh, we stood there, awkward and youthful, we tangled;**

**A piece of my soul escaped.**

With these words, I was released from the hands that had been holding me for what seemed to be hours. I gasped when the fingers unwrapped themselves from my upper arms, and Kuwabara reached out to me, pulling me into his big, strong arms. I curled up under his arm and clutched onto his t-shirt, needing to feel secure. He was the best in those situations, keeping things light with his humorous persona and his unbeatable bear hugs.

"Tell me when it`s over," I whined into his chest. I felt his grip around me tighten protectively, and I appreciated the oaf in that moment more so than I might ever have before.

"Jeeze, quit shakin', Jill, you`re freaking me out, okay?" He grumbled, but didn`t loosen his grip on me. This was a type of comfort for "tough guys", I guess.

"Sensui-san…" I heard Mitari speak up, "His anger, his calmness, his strength, it`s all there now. Everything he was lacking before is gone. It actually feels like he`s become complete!"

I felt a growl rise up in Kuwabara before he started barking over my head,

"He was one guy before, and he`s one guy now. You can call him the 'Main Personality', but it doesn`t make him anything more than another piece of the same whole."

I felt his lungs expand as he drew in another breath to cheer Yusuke on,

"Don`t get scared, Urameshi! He`s just another psycho like the others!"

I flinched a moment later at the sharp sounds of maniacal laughter. I had always hated horror movies, and I had found myself in the middle of one. His laugh was taunting, humiliating. If I was shaking before, then I had begun convulsing in Kuwabara`s arms at the sound of that laugh ringing through my head.

More laughter and smug dialogue passed from Sensui`s lips, and I tried my best to simply ignore it as I pressed myself to the comforts of Kuwabara, praying that I would awaken from the mess already.

And then I heard a voice in the back of my mind, one that did not belong to Shuichi, but from another vaguely familiar apparition. I shuddered when I recognized the gravelly voice of Youko Kurama echoing from somewhere in the back of my subconscious,

_This is only one of the many reasons Shuichi Minamino was forced to leave you. _

I pushed away from Kuwabara, looking around the dimension and over to Shuichi, who was levitating a few feet away. We made eye contact, and the red head floating returned the puzzled look I was giving him.

How is he in my head? I thought, wondering if Shuichi`s subconscious could hear me thinking.

Shuichi, are you in here? I asked internally, trying to verify.

_He can`t hear you, so let me offer you a bit of helpful advice while it`s just us, kid,_

Yeah, okay, Pops, I rolled my eyes. Wasn`t Youko Kurama just Shuichi the entire time? How were they able to separate?

_I`m not cruel enough to devour the soul of my own host, if that`s what you assumed. I`m sharing your body as a separate entity this very moment, aren't I?_

Yeah, how exactly did he manage that?

_I`ve been here since the chandelier fell on us in your subconscious. You nearly reduced the boy to a brainless shell, I`ll have you know. Had I not escaped, we both could have been rendered brain dead. _

It`s not like I meant to do that, prick.

_Didn`t you wonder how you were able to remember the fight with Sensui when you never really witnessed it? _

It was comforting to know that there was a demon living inside of me for the past four days. If this had been a phone conversation, I would have politely hung up and screamed for eternity. Unfortunately, this was all being dealt with internally, and my screaming wouldn`t do a thing for the phantoms of my subconscious surrounding me.

There was no point in remembering things that were not part of my own memory. Youko`s memories wouldn`t be able jump the ones that had been wiped from me, because there was nothing there to hook the cables up to. There had to be some way for me to take us back to a memory that was of my own.

_Unless I give you that control, you aren`t going anywhere._

Oh, okay, what had his panties in a bunch?

_Unless you are forced to witness the kind of hell everyone one of us has gone through to protect their loved ones, along with the rest of the Ningen`s, you will never understand why it is that Shuichi can`t focus his attention on you for every waking moment. _

My mouth dropped, and I felt the color rush to my cheeks. I was being called out.

_If Shuichi is dedicated to anyone aside from Shiori, it`s you, as I can`t fathom any other being that could withstand the kind of abuse that you put him through, and I know for a fact that Shuichi is not masochistic. Let this be a lesson to you, girl. I won`t allow you to move forward with these memories until you`ve opened your eyes to exactly how ridiculous and manipulative your behavior is. This is the last time a petty, human girl takes control over the both of us. _

I felt tears stinging my eyes again, running down my cheeks. I didn`t let out a sob, trying not to draw any attention to myself as I did so. I cried so much. I felt my emotions overwhelming me, again.

Youko`s hatred for me had be shaking, and I felt …dirty.

_This is exactly what I mean. Your loved ones are being maimed by the enemy right before your eyes, and you`re crying over your own, selfish reasons. _

I wondered how long it was that Youko Kurama had felt this way about me, as I felt myself burning with anger for him.

I waited for a reply to my raging thoughts, but there was nothing.

Oh, are you done now? I thought, pressing my lips tightly together, so that I wouldn`t say the words aloud.

I heard a shriek from below, and my eyes caught what looked like bones protruding from Yusuke`s arm as Sensui caught Koenma`s binky.

And then, out of no where,

A shoe.

I couldn`t help but crack up at the sneaker that was implanted on Sensui`s face, sliding off to reveal his expressionless features, thought everyone knew he had to be raging on the inside. I was laughing too hard, giving Kuwabara the giggles as well as I was once again leaning into his side.

"Only you morons would find something hilarious about this situation." Hiei sneered as we shook with laughter, attempting to keep it tucked away in our puffed out cheeks, mouths covered with our hands. Hiei`s comment only made us snort harder. It was always funnier when you weren`t supposed to be laughing.

"I figured you wouldn't want to die yet." Was Sensui`s calm reply. Oh, he was definitely livid. I knew Yusuke would kick his ass so hard, that soon it would be over with. That was the only hope that I clung to. I had to humor myself if I planned on surviving Youko`s memories.

"Better than surrendering." Yusuke cracked one of his boyish grins, and I felt myself crack one too.

"Shinobu!" Koenma`s voice called out from beside Elise, who was still hovering over him protectively with her bow at her side.

"Shut the fuck up already!" Yusuke snapped at him before he could say anything else to the former spirit detective,

"Let me fight him. I`m beggin' ya," Yusuke pleaded, "Just let me."

He looked so determined to win. If anyone deserved to win this fight, it was Yusuke, who had always been considered the underdog before he had been trusted with the fate of the Ningenkai. If I knew he didn`t win the battle against Sensui, I was sure my heart would break, and not for the demise of myself or the entire human race, but for Yusuke alone.

I was capable of feeling for others, despite what Youko seemed to think.

I watched the teenager wave Sensui over, daring him to kill him with a knowing smirk on his face. I wondered if Yusuke was planning something, as it seemed he had already tried every other tactic in the book.

"Something awesome`s about to happen…" He warned the older man, "You`d better kill me before it does."

Please tell me that he`s right, I thought to myself.

_Oh, he is._ Finally, Shuichi was connected to me again. Perfect.

Did you know, I projected my thoughts out to him, taking full advantage of my opportunity to interrogate, that _Youko Kurama_ has infested himself inside of me this entire time? I closed my eyes and ground my teeth, afraid that Shuichi had known the whole time and decided against telling me.

_It wasn`t that I knew he was inside you, I just knew that he wasn`t with me anymore._

Ugh, I supposed that I couldn`t get mad over that. But did that mean that he was with me when I was awake, and unaware of his existence?

…

Shu?

_I`ve been without my you-ki for the past four days, I suppose it would be safe to say that, yes, he is laying dormant inside of you in your conscious state. _

That was just perfect, then. The last thing I needed was another mental breakdown on top of everything else. I`d have to start seeing a psychiatrist instead of a counselor soon, and then maybe they`d pump me full of more drugs that I could grow dependent on. Yes, excellent. Great.

Fuck.

_Youko won`t torment you, he isn`t so bad._

Ha, I scoffed internally, and decided against going into detail on my newfound hatred for the fox demon that had already started in on stomping all over the eggshells that triggered my emotional reactions.

"Freaking Urameshi," Kuwabara snarled from above my head that had been too busy swimming with thoughts to pay much attention to the fight.

"He must have another plan… He`ll counter right when Sensui closes in."

"I don`t think he does."

We both looked to Hiei, who was sweating profusely, which was peculiar for a demon who`s emphasis was fire, right? I noticed that Shuichi was standing beside him, sweating as well, as if they`d both just popped a Molly.

"He can`t beat Sensui one-on-one."

I could literally hear Kuwabara`s teeth grinding in my ear.

"I guess you can`t sense it because you`re both human… But right now, his power`s on the same level of that of an S-Class demon."

"Wha-"

"He`s suppressing his power as much as he can," Shuichi spoke up, with eyes narrowed down at Yusuke and Sensui, "To him, breaking Yusuke`s arm was like crushing an ant."

"Damn it, Kurama," Kuwabara bellowed so loud that I found my hands shooting up to cover my ears, blocking them from the noise, "Not you too!"

"I was so careless," Hiei went on, "I thought he was just overestimating himself, but he`s strong enough to kill all of us with ease."

"It`s funny…" I watched as the sweat rolled down his tan features, "It`s almost impossible to find someone in the demon world with S-Class power… And we end up fighting one in the human world… and he`s a human himself."

"No way…" Kuwabara stammered. I shuddered at the thought of someone possessing that kind of power. It was so unfair to every defenseless human out there, like myself. I was neither strong or fast, and there was no way I was capable of dancing around an attacker.

A rumbling noise cut through the conversation, and outside of the dimension we`d been places in, I could see the walls of the cave beginning to crumble around the four that were outside of the Floor Man.

I couldn`t hear over the rumbling going on, I was forced to watch them exchanging a few more words. I was now scared stiff, literally. I could feel the hairs on my back rise up and prickle at my clothes. I shivered, wrapping my arms around my body as I watched the immense aura surrounding Sensui continue to destroy the cave around him.

I flinched when I felt Shuichi`s hand wrap around my arm. He pulled me over to him and wrapped his arms protectively around me, crushing my bones beneath his. He was smaller than Kazuma, but his grasp was still inescapable.

He was more frightened than I was, as I knew every single one of them would make it out alive… This Shuichi only knew the logical prediction he had made about… _the end_.

"I should have gotten you and mother out of here, somewhere far enough away to prolong this type of demise. I was so careless,"

I didn`t realize that it was possible for him to be frightened of anything. It scared me even more to realize that Shuichi wasn`t indestructible like I had always made him out to be. It was still possible to beat him in a fight. I had never seen him show fear in the face of an enemy before.

For maybe the first time, I was given the opportunity to comfort him instead of the other way around.

I looked up at him sternly, grabbing his chin in my hand, forcing him to look my square in the eye.

"We`re going to be _just fine_. Relax." I pushed myself back, away from the scared demon so that I could shed myself of my favorite blue hoodie. I used the soft material to mop the sweat up, off of his face. Then I pushed his hair back from around his face to cool him down.

"Breathe, okay?" I squeezed his shoulder firmly before sliding an arm around his waist, fitting my head into the crook of his neck. He watched me with wide eyes, unable to comprehend my reaction to the situation.

"Jillian, I think you`re in denial," He whispered to me, and I was unable to answer as the sound of more rumbling caught my attention. Sensui had used his power to throw Yusuke, Koenma, and my baby sister into the wall of the cave. I bit back a cry of sympathy, as I was trying to be strong for the boy next to me.

"Quit, just have faith in Yusuke." I told him, "It`s all we can do."

Elise was standing first, hovering once again over the Prince, her hands on his shoulders as he shouted to Yusuke.

I noticed that Sensui had his pacifier, and I cringed. These plot twists were just not heading in our favor like they usually did.

Koenma turned to Sensui then, hands projecting his own glowing energy, forcing a mass of the light straight for the man before him. Everyone in that moment held their breath, praying that this could stop him and the impending obliteration that resided inside the tunnel.

No, instead, Sensui was enveloped by that energy for a brief moment, before he propelled it upwards, allowing it to shoot freely through the top of the cave. I watched as Koenma fell to his knees, exhausted from handling that much Spirit Energy. He looked completely defeated as he crouched on all fours before Sensui, looking disheveled and dripping with sweat as well.

Yusuke patted his shoulder reassuringly as he stepped forward, his determination never faltering for a moment. I smiled down at him, though Koenma implored him to throw in the towel and lay down before the monster that would seal our fate.

"Urameshi`s got a plan!" Kuwabara, just as determined and faithful as always, never gave up on his best friend.

"There`s no way he`s just going to stand there and get killed!"

I felt Shuichi`s chest vibrate as he stammered,

"Unless…"

His breath caught in his throat before he managed to compose himself once more. I pitied him more than ever now, never having seen him lose all hope in a situation before. This was not the same Shuichi that had a plan for everything, no, this was how he deteriorated when he wasn`t in control of anything anymore.

We were far more similar than I`d thought.

"Kuwabara-kun, you remember what you did when Yusuke was fighting Toguro?"  
The name was familiar, it was from the Dark Tournament. Scenes of Yusuke`s final fight flashed through my mind, and I entertained the thought that they might also belong to Youko as well.

I was broken from that thought as Kuwabara started hollering desperately down at Yusuke.

"Koenma, stop this!" He screamed as he pressed himself up against the wall that separated the dimensions, pleading with Yusuke, who couldn`t hear him, to refrain from sacrificing his life to stop Sensui. Tears ran down his face, and if Shuichi hadn`t had such a strong hold on me, I would have attempted to comfort him. Losing Yusuke would be the same as losing a brother for Kuwabara.

I couldn`t imagine my life without my sister.

"Hey, you," Hiei turned to Itsuki, tugging his cloak from his shoulder and abandoning it to float in the lost space,

"Let us out of here, now. If I`m gonna die, I`m wanna die fighting."

Kuwabara and I looked to the small demon with eyes wide, and I felt a smile creep onto my face in amusement. Hiei would never admit it, but this was what friendship was supposed to be like.

I was a tad startled when a vine surrounded Shuichi and I, and I looked over to see that he was gripping his rose whip tightly in his free hand, eyes turning hard.

"Five on one.. Yusuke will be mad," He said confidently, "But I couldn`t stand it if one of us was gone. That`s why we came."

I looked up at him, admiring the Shuichi that I knew very well. He refined again, determined like the others to fight things out until the very end.

"Let us go to his side."

We all turned to Itsuki, who stood with his arms folded across his chest. He smirked tauntingly at us, and I felt my gaze hardening in his direction as the others glared down on him with me.

"No," His smirk faded into a look of uncertainty as he continued, "Even together, the five of you can`t beat Shinobu, however," He gestured to us, "Your combined power may be enough for you to escape."

"I`m not foolish enough to underestimate you. Hiei and Kurama, you were once A-class demons, and while that may not be true at the moment, if I let you three escape, I know you`ll come back stronger. So you`re staying right here, and you`ll waste away to nothing."

Hiei chuckled darkly as the oppression weighed on his chest, still trying to prove himself strong in the face of an enemy that he knew would crush him.

An orange glow drew my attention to Kuwabara, who immediately charged the barrier of the Floor Man, and with one swift arm movement, cut it clean through.

As we were sent hurdling to the cave floor, I heard Itsuki shout down from behind us, ordering the death of our comrade. I watched Sensui charge Yusuke as we fell, and I about ripped the material of Shuichi`s shirt as he held me close to him as we fell. Shuichi landed gracefully on the floor of the cave, and unlatched his arms from around me as his arches hit the ground. I stumbled back into Mitari, falling over him, knocking both of us to the ground.

I scrambled to look up and watch my boys all stop short as they watched their teammate flying backwards, his face too peaceful to be enduring pain anymore.

Yusuke laid on the ground, eyes closed, a serene look passing over his face. He looked the same as he did when he was sleeping, body regenerating to fight in the Dark Tournament.

But that was ages ago, and Yusuke wasn`t sleeping. He was gone.

I burst into tears immediately, convulsing with sobs so heavy that I could do nothing but fall to my knees and cry, cry, cry…

Kuwabara, in denial, towered over Yusuke`s lifeless body, demanding that he would awaken. I shook my head. Surely this was not what was supposed to happen.

It`s just a dream, I tried to tell myself, so why did this feel so real to me?

"Ahh," I looked through blurry eyes to the bastard sitting atop his god damned television, smiling satisfactory to himself, delighting in our misery,

"The movie`s over already. I was so preoccupied with fighting I didn`t get to listen to the ending. Too bad, it`s really a beautiful requiem. It would have been perfect for his final moments."

I felt the scream tear through my throat, riveting my entire body as I shook with anger. I couldn`t tell if the dreaming state was forcing the entire cave to shudder so violently, or if it was just how things happened. I wrapped my hands around my head, crouching over, feeling the need to vomit.

Tell me this is what happened, Shuichi, I begged in my head,

Please tell me this is how things really happened! Tell me they survive this…

I panicked when there was nothing but silence in return to my question, staring down at the quaking Earth below me.

Shuichi? Youko? Hello?!

_Look up, girl._

My eyes flashed towards the white lightening that flew past my vision, whistling as it passed by, piercing the fuzzy television screen. I watched as the screen cracked with Elise`s arrow protruding from it momentarily before the entire machine blew into a million tiny pieces.

Sensui, of course, was not among those tiny pieces.

I watched in horror as my baby sister, whom I was responsible for in the present day, charged the enemy with a fierceness that I had never seen in her eyes before. She was going in for the kill this time, not allowing anyone or anything to hold her back. Her human soles carrying her faster than I`d ever witnessed.

She was pursued by the boys as the demons began to break out of the tunnel.

I watched Elise`s white light encircle her as she pushed forward, pulling an arrow from behind her as she lunged forward, shooting straight at Sensui.

They were both pulled into the tunnel as Hiei`s dragon annihilated the lower class demons that were pouring into the cave.  
The two of them disappeared out of sight, with Hiei, Youko Kurama, and Kuwabara following close behind.

_/ __**Elise**_

Someone had just pounced on top of me in my sleep, startling me awake. Jillian had latched her arms around me, hyperventilating into my shoulder as she laid on top of me in the dark.

"I thought you were dead!" She sobbed, "You fell down the hole, the dark hole and you died, _everyone died_!"

I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about. It must have been the dreams again.

I pushed her back off of me, reaching for the lamp next to my bed. It flickered on and I saw Jillian sitting up, tearing her hair out over this nightmare.

"Elise, I think something is in my head," She breathed heavily, shaking, "I heard voices in my head, when I was sleeping. I think they`re still there!"

The decibels of her voice grew with every word, and there was no way to calm her down when she was having an episode like this.

"It`s all in you head, Jill," I attempted reasoning anyway, to no avail.

"I`m not lying, Elise, there`s someone in my head, right now!" Her fingers encased her skull, and she pressed on her cranium as if that would get rid of the figments of her own imagination.

I watched her, realizing that maybe something, or, more likely _someone_, had entered her head in her sleep.

I thought about the strand of hair I`d found on her pillow a week prior before flinging my bedroom door open, walking into the living room. I rounded the corner into the mud room, eyeing the front door.

...It had been left unlocked.


	8. Decoy

My whole life was in black and white. There were no shades between the two, no red or blue hues, no pastels or vivid greens of springtime. It was permanently winter in my head, which would explain why I was always so cold, inside and out. I felt hollow most of my life, always reaching out for something just out of reach.

Miss Mori, my dance instructor growing up, always told my parents that I danced aggressively, as if I were trying to portray some sort of inner turmoil. Coincidentally enough, my violin professor told me the same exact thing, constantly reminding me to relax, to find tranquility and peace in the instrument.

But I couldn`t, just couldn`t do it. When I was left to practice alone, I danced as angrily as I wanted to, I ripped my violin to shreds. Everything I did was loud, aggressive and expressive to every note, every movement. I could hardly stand it any other way. Though classically trained since early childhood, I was forced to refrain from pulling my hair out trying to compose myself when dealing with the arts.

And so I danced alone, late at night in the studio. I was trying to exorcise my demons, the nightmares that had plagued me. For some reason, my energy never seemed to run dry. I felt more alive than I`d ever felt, but with all of this drive that had recently sprung onto me came a sudden rage that I couldn`t place. I had everything, so why did I feel so degraded, dirty, desolate? I just wanted to tire myself, purged of all my whirlwind emotions, but my wish wasn`t granted. I turned the music on the stereo louder, changing from classical to more modern tunes. Rock bands like Megallica rattled the speakers on the stereo as I moved, more like mosh than actual dance convoyed to exhilarating guitar riffs and vocals that mimicked the sound of animals wailing and growling in heat.

But still, nothing felt right. I eventually shut the music off with an exasperated cry, not wanting to dance or fulfill anything therapeutic to solve my problems. No, I wanted a fight. I wanted a good, hard, fistfight. I wanted to scream in the face of what was oppressing me, I wanted to cry. I _wanted_ to be sad.

It was as if my entire being ached to be miserable sometimes. I had never been able to figure it out. If I wasn`t upset about something, I didn`t feel satisfied. I wasn`t satisfied unless I was _unsatisfied_.

I felt myself pulling me under the water, dowsing me in these black thoughts that I had about myself. I was sure that I`d run myself to my end this way. I wanted to hurt, to wreck my car, sail through the windshield and onto the pavement, numbed at death`s embrace. And at the same time, I wanted to live.

I laid down on the cold, wooden floor of the ballet studio located on the sixth floor of the Fine Arts building. I didn`t mind the cold this time, as I was warm with all of the exercise, shirt sticking to my body with sweat. I listened to my breath come and go as my chest accompanied each inhale and exhale with a slow rise and fall, reminding me that I was still human, despite what I assumed to be pure adrenaline rushing through my veins.

I could hear my heart fluttering over the sound of rain beating against the windows overlooking the downtown area in Tokyo. The city lights shone in the studio as I laid in the dark. Images of raindrops were projected onto the walls and floor as the lights from the surrounding buildings and lampposts illuminated the droplets on the glass.

My mind raced like a runaway train as I debated whether I should pack up and return home to my apartment or stay in the studio, where I felt safe. Of course, staying at the school wasn`t comforting to me either. I felt a weariness in my mind, something buried deep in my soul was keeping this restlessness alive inside of me, fueling these nightmares. I couldn`t escape it by running away, as I did most problems.

If I wanted to exile this demon, I would have to see it through to the end.

**VIII - DECOY**

**You've never been so used as I'm using you, abusing you, my little decoy.**

**Don't look so blue, you should've seen right through.**

**I'm using you, my little decoy**

I had been watching the two for the last fifteen minutes as they sat side by side at the train depot. The two blondes stood out drastically among the sea of darker haired natives. They acted naturally, as if they`d both lived in Japan for a long time, casually waiting for their train into the city to arrive.

The smaller girl fiddled with her leather satchel, pulling a stick of balm out and brushing her snowy, blonde strands from her face before applying it. She was a few inches shorter than the other and had a figure like a pin. To her left sat a similar looking girl, taller, with more curves. Her rosy lips parted as she yawned idly, growing impatient for the train to arrive. She sat with a poised disposition, legs crossed at the ankles, sitting straight, like a proper lady.

They exchanged few words, not because they were cold or unfriendly, but they seemed comfortable with each other`s silence. They were an easygoing pair together. Though their style and posture was completely opposite, they held a similar air. It was only natural that they were siblings.

I`d known of the Beckett`s for quite some time, and the older sibling had caught my eye the moment I`d first met her. I had been interning at her father`s company when I was nineteen.

Nippon, or NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) had been taking off, officially making James Beckett one of the richest men in the area. I had the privilege of being chosen from many for the internship program at NTT.

I initially met Jillian at the five year anniversary party of the company in April of nineteen ninety. She was fifteen and in her first year of Meiou High. I remember being attracted to her from the moment her eyes met mine. The way she looked at me—as if I were the only man in the entire world that could capture her attention. I could still remember her wry smile from across the room, the way she batted her lashes at me.

That was also the night I decided that I was going to court Ms. Beckett. I was attracted to her on a physical level, and her share of James`s inheritance would be worth my while, as his company expanded every day.

Of course, she had her flaws as I assumed she would, but the payment I`d receive was well worth the grief Jillian often put me through. She would throw her fits and be melodramatic and manipulative as females often were, and all I had to do was pretend like I was listening to every whine and sigh.  
And as if that wasn`t good enough already, I was also getting laid, to the envy of many I worked with. My coworkers had been longing to bend the boss`s daughter over their desks before I was even offered the job. Jillian was often a part of the daily banter that was thrown around between my coworkers in the break room.

I watched as the train into Tokyo halted and the doors slid open. Elise and Jillian boarded the train. Even the way Jillian walked was sexual. Everything about her was attractive, that is, if you were willing to turn a blind eye to her episodes. I was doing the Beckett`s a favor and taking her off their hands, as I was sure they were exhausted from years of putting up with her _personality disorder, _a label the doctors placed on a simply overly spoiled girl to make a steady living off of their counseling sessions. Her own father seemed relieved when I`d asked him for his blessing.

Elise`s face appeared in the window of the train, as she preferred sitting next to the window. Jillian didn`t mind the aisle seats, as she was a people-watcher, a talker. She could strike up a conversation with almost anyone if she wanted to. She was extremely sociable, especially when speaking to children. She adored toddlers.

I had no intention of reproducing with the girl. She wasn`t fit to be a mother, being that she was the most irresponsible and reckless person I`d ever met in my entire life. Not only that, but I would already be parenting her for the rest of our lives anyway. I was already her full time babysitter aside from Elise, who had always seemed so mature compared to her sister. Another reason why I had no desire to be a parent – the risk of overindulging my child and turning him or her into a wreck like my fiancée.

I watched as the train pulled away from the station, racing off to it`s next destination, carrying my future bride and sister-in-law. After it disappeared from sight, I turned to the briefcase next to me, ready to go over some spreadsheets. Which is precisely when I was so rudely interrupted by an all too familiar red head that seated himself across the table from me.

"How deviant of you to observe your fiancée from this location." I narrowed my eyes at the man sitting across from me. His facial expression was completely unreadable.

Hatanaka`s step-son was never expected of such shady behavior as he had portrayed there in the café at the depot, and my interest in him was piqued as he continued to stare at me with an arrogance that I couldn`t place, like that of a sociopath.

"How _deviant_ of you to have noticed." I sipped from the coffee in front of me, keeping my mannerisms as casual as possible. Shuichi Minamino was no stranger to Jillian, as they`d spent years together, sharing the same Junior High and Highschool. James Beckett was rather fond of the Minamino`s and considered them a close family friend, giving Shiori and her recent husband, Hatanaka-san, praise left and right at company meetings.

"You look polished, Minamino," I observed the suit he had dawned in light of the most recent job opportunity that had opened up for him in Hatanaka`s department. His hair, usually unruly and left to lay on his shoulders was tied into a rather high ponytail at the crown of his head, leaving the surrounding hairs to frame his sharp features—including the vibrant green eyes that stared at me from across the table.

"I have to stay on top of my game," He confessed, not blinking an eye in another direction. Not even for a moment did that infuriatingly intimidating stare falter under mine. It was apparent he was trying to make me feel inferior.

"Tell me, to what do I owe this pleasure?" I asked, straightening and giving him a stern look of my own.

"I have concerned myself with Jillian`s well being for the past six and a half years," I bristled at the mention of my fiancée`s name instinctively. I pretended to seem interested in the lightest way possible, despite the hairs on my arms standing straight as pins and needles, piercing every pore with a frigidity unlike any other.

"I`m well aware of your intentions for the girl, and I demand you call off your engagement with her as soon as possible." His tone was too passive sounding for the words that he had been uttering at a low level, as to avert the ears of surrounding customers.

"You have lead the child on for months, poisoning her heart like an infectious disease. I don`t think I need to remind you how delicate Jillian`s situation is. Should she ever find out the real reasoning behind your proposal," He paused, expression taking on a pained look as he continued,

"I fear she would not handle her grief over your callousness very lightly." He didn`t leave much room for me to interject between words without making a scene, so I let his tongue run rampant,

"However, being the sadist I know her to be, I fully expect her to remain in her marriage with you, attempting to stay blissfully unaware of the ulterior motives behind your proposal. I realize that the amount of money you had depended on receiving may convince you to ignore my warning, but hear me now,"

I eyed the man carefully as he leaned in, keeping his voice as low as possible while maintaining a menacing demeanor,

"If you do not proceed with my request of calling off your engagement, I will not hesitate to sever it myself."

With these words, he pushed himself away from the table and straightened, leaving me all but stammering for a retort.

"How dare you." I growled in reply, and he paused as he made his way past me, awaiting to hear my resentful words.

"You know nothing regarding my relationship to Beckett-chan." I snarled, "And I will make sure you don`t come within a hundred yards of her. James Beckett himself will be hearing about this." I felt secure in this threat, momentarily, before he opened his mouth again, that is.

"Don`t bother," He smiled politely, though fake, "He`s already been informed."

I felt my jaw tense, keeping me from shouting after him as he disappeared out the door and into the crowds. I gaped in the direction he had gone for a few seconds, not able to wrap my head around how he could have possibly known my plans. Surely, he`d been bluffing about informing Jillian`s father, the CEO of the company, of this petty business.

That evening I made my way to Jillian`s apartment to verify if she knew anything of Shuichi`s threat, confident that I could convince her that his information was indeed completely false.

I stepped out into the long hallway that lead to the Beckett`s door and froze at the sight before me. Down the hall, covering Jillian and Elise`s front door, was a patch of vines. Roses bloomed among the thorns, their red flush a warning to those that dared to enter. I watched as the blooms on the vines seemed to darken with each passing moment that I watched them, becoming more vicious as time passed.

And as soon as I heard the elevator ringing behind me, alerting me that someone was about to step out, onto the floor, the vines retreated behind the door, rapidly crawling into the cracks of the door, hidden from sight completely just as my fiancée stepped onto the carpet of the hallway.

"Oh, Daisuke," She breathed, startled to find me there. I turned to look at her, face flushed and hair matted to her with sweat. She`d been dancing late at night at the studio in Tokyo, and had just caught the train back. This concerned me, as it was dangerous to take the link back so late in the evening.  
"You know how I feel about you taking the train at night." I chided her as she stepped toward me, frowning a bit. She leaned forwards, pressing her lips hungrily to mine, her usual cop out when she wanted to avoid talking about something. I allowed her to kiss me, reassured that she had not been speaking with Minamino as of recent.

"Why are you here?" She asked when our lips parted, her keys clinking in her hand. She looked down at them, trying to find the one for the door. I watched her walk past me, blonde hair bouncing against her back as she moved.

"I thought I`d stop in, I was in the area." I lied, having driven thirty minutes out of my way to get there. My footsteps felt weighted as we drew closer to the entryway, hesitant of the menacing looking rosebush that had been awaiting my arrival not sixty seconds before.

"Are you staying the night?" She asked as she unlocked the door, turning her keys in the lock and pushing it open. I held my breath as she flicked the light switch. There was no shrubbery to be seen. Perhaps it`d been a figment of my imagination.

No, I was certain of what I saw. We entered the loft, discarding our shoes before placing them in the small closet in the entryway. Everything seemed normal, orderly and free of clutter, as Jillian preferred.

"Daisuke?" She turned back to me as I hadn`t replied to her question. Was I staying the night?

Loaded question, Jill. She looked up at me with wide, slate eyes, blinking expectantly. She assumed that I was going to say yes, that I wanted to stay the night. Something about nightmares she`d been having.

"I would," I lied, "But I have to drive out to Kyoto tomorrow morning, and I need to pack for the trip."

I watched her eyes hit the floor, as if she knew I were lying, but of course she didn`t.

"Oh," She murmured, making a manipulative attempt to guilt me into staying the night. She was sweaty, tired, and there was little chance that she would be up for much else that night besides cuddling, which was incredibly uncomfortable for me. I often overheated and Jillian only suffocated me under all of her thick duvets and comforters, as if she couldn`t get warm enough, she had to practically lay on top of me.

"Can I get you something to drink?" She asked, tone turning cold. She wanted me to leave now. I could feel the negativity rolling off of every word, sending silent messages to me to decline the offer she had made out of habit.

"No thank you. I do have to drive," I smiled politely at her, and she forced a smile back.

"Well… I`m going to hop in the shower." She stated, offering one last longing look at me. I only continued to smile back at her.

"Feel free to let yourself out." Her tone was dull, lifeless. She turned, retreating for her bedroom and shutting the door behind her with less subtlety than a raging bull.

I couldn`t help but snicker a little at this behavior. Don`t mistake that for thinking that it was cute or quirky, just so typical of the girl to behave that way. She was as readable as a billboard, thoughts appearing across her forehead in marquee.

When I heard the water running, I proceeded to check every area of the loft for the mysterious vines that I`d caught sight of earlier. I found nothing, all clear of any trace of plant life. There were no pedals or thorns anywhere within the loft. I scowled, disappointed and confused as to how that could have been. Shaking my head, I let myself out of the apartment.

I opened the door to the wide eyed younger Beckett girl, staring disbelievingly at me as we stood, startled at the presence of the other. Blue eyes dodged here and there, looking around the entry way as I had at first when Jillian had let me in.

"Hello, Daisuke," She greeted, snapping out of the trance she`d just been in. Her face dawned an irritated look, as if she`d remembered something that unsettled her.

"Elise," I greeted, nodding at her as I stepped aside for her to enter her apartment.

She strolled past me, nodding back and briskly shutting the door behind me. The younger girl was far more intimidating than her sister, and twice as cold. It had taken me a while to get on her good side, but she`d finally accepted my presence in her sister`s life when I`d slipped a ring on her finger.

I heard Elise call out to her sister from behind the door, footsteps carrying her into the girl`s bedroom. I waited in the hallway for another moment, waiting for the vines to appear on the door again. To my dismay, nothing happened.

I let out a huff of air before turning on my heel and making my way for the elevator. This visit was to assure myself of Jillian`s ignorance of my motive for marrying her, and though everything seemed to still be in place, those vines set me off. I could feel the panic forcing my stomach to constrict with anxiousness. One name kept rolling through my head as I made my way to the car, and I found myself becoming angry as it echoed repeatedly through my brain.

_Minamino_.


	9. In The Mourning

White blonde hair caught Shuichi`s green eyes as he looked up from the computer screen sitting on the desk slightly to the right. Elise stood, disheveled, as if she`d just ran across town, out of breath and beads of sweat running down her face.

"You know it`s really hard to track you down when you suppress your you-ki." She hissed accusingly as she shut the door to the Communications office. There was no one waiting inside the waiting room. Shuichi winced at the words, not planning on telling Elise that the reason for his nonexistent you-ki wasn`t because he was suppressing it, but because it was laying dormant inside Jillian Beckett.

"What happened to your internship at the University?" Elise asked, folding her arms and stepping closer to the desk Shuichi was seated at. He gestured to a chair sitting before his desk,  
"Please take a seat, Elise."

"Don`t mind if I do." She sat herself across from him and leaned onto his desk on her elbows, speaking quietly in case someone entered the office.

"You aren`t here to talk about my internship at the University." Shuichi acknowledged, as Elise didn`t speak to him unless it was purely business. Small talk was out of the question between the two, as they hadn`t been particularly friendly towards each other for years, even having to force civility at moments

"You know god damn well why I`m here." She rolled her eyes, "I know you`ve been sneaking in and out of my apartment to mess with Jillian. Do you see these bags?" She pointed a chipped, delft blue fingernail to the circles under her eyes,

"I`ve been listening to her scream throughout the night for the past week, and I`m getting really irritable." She narrowed her eyes,

"And I mean _really_, really irritable." Her voice could have cut clean through glass, but it was nothing new. Elise was overprotective of her sister when it came to him, always had been. Their relationship had always been hard on her after finding out that Shuichi was actually Youko Kurama. She had never been for the two, but never said much, as she saw that Jillian was happy.

Well, _was_ happy.

"What are you doing?" Her expression softened as she went on,

"Kurama, she`s engaged, and she doesn`t remember a thing about you. What do you think you can do about it? What can anyone do?"

Green eyes flickered to the door and back to the younger Beckett sibling, picking over his words carefully so that he could make Elise see the bed that Jillian was making herself.

"About her engagement," He dove right in, ready to call Daisuke out, deterring the girl`s anger from him and to the scum fiancée to soften the blow that he would eventually deliver about the memory recollection.

"Listen, Kurama, I know this has got to be hard on you…"

"Since when have you known me to speak based on pure emotion?" He countered, silencing the blonde almost instantly,

"Would you like to know Daisuke Jinguuji`s motive behind proposing to Jillian or not?"

Elise cocked her head to the side, lagoon blue eyes sparkling with curiosity,

"I`m listening…"

* * *

**IX - IN THE MOURNING**

******I know you care, I know it has always been there.**

**But there is trouble ahead, I can feel it. You are just saving yourself when you hide it.**

I sunk into the near scalding bathwater and let the bubbles I`d put in devour my body, letting my head rest above the surface of the water as I leaned back against the tub. I lifted one foot out of the water, inspecting my pedicure. I couldn`t remember if I`d gone to the salon the last Friday or if that was the week before. Deep in thought, I didn`t notice Elise had been calling for me until she made her way into the bathroom.

I`d left to door unlocked in case Daisuke changed his mind and wanted to stay the night. It was silly and clingy, pathetic, but I was feeling vulnerable. I didn`t want to be alone with all of these weird nightmares I was having. I`d already bought myself a nightlight to plug into the wall. I was a coward at best.

My younger sister kneeled next to the tub, sliding onto her bottom on the bath mat I`d set out so that my wet feet wouldn`t slip on the tile floor.

"What?" I groaned, looking up at her through half lidded eyes. If I wasn`t feeling tired and sore earlier at the studio, I was feeling it then.

"We gotta talk." Elise played with a mound of bubbles floating on the surface of the water.

"'Bout what?" I yawned, wishing it was perfectly acceptable to fall asleep in the bathtub without having to worry about the water getting cold.

"Seriously, Jill," She pressed, reaching her icy cold hands into the water and gripping my shoulder, giving it a nudge. I slipped down into the water and gagged as I got bubbles in my mouth. I spit the bathwater up in her face, and she turned away, trying to shield herself with her hands. I cackled at my own retaliation, watching her wipe her face off with the towel I`d left out.

"Hey!" I shouted angrily upon seeing that she still had a full face of makeup on, "Don`t get makeup all over that towel!"

"Would you shut up and listen?!" She cried, exasperated, smacking me over the head with the towel. I glared, frowning overdramatically.

"What? What do you want?!" I gave up, sitting up in the tub and completely awake and alert, having enough and growing petulant.

"Are you really ready to get married?" The loaded question hit me like a double decker bus, and I felt my mouth drop. Elise had never confronted me about Daisuke-or any other man-like this before.

Not that I could really remember ever being serious with a guy before Daisuke, just shameless flirting, really.

"I thought you liked Daisuke, what`s up with you?"

"This isn`t about Daisuke, this is about you. You realize you have to be in love with someone if you really want to marry them, don`t you? Are you really in love with him?"

"That`s tall talk for a high-schooler," I could feel myself getting defensive. Why was Elise attacking me like this? She was usually laid back, calm. Something was behind this confrontation and I was going to get to the bottom of it.

"You get bored, Jillian, you`re going to fall out of-" She paused, not wanting to use L-O-V-E word, "—whatever it is, _infatuation_, with him, and you`re going to wake up in a year or maybe less and have a huge crisis!"

"What do you even know about infatuation, or love for that matter?" Was my reply, as I leaned over the rim of the tub to get in her face,

"You just don`t like that I`m finally kind of happy, do you? Are you jealous?"

"Don`t be fucking stupid, Jillian," Elise cried, face-palming her forehead as if she couldn`t believe the words I`d just spoken to her.

"No, you know what?" I could hear my voice taking on the dangerous tone it usually did when I was sincerely pissed off, a shame, as I hadn`t really ever liked using it on my own sister and best friend,

"If you don`t approve, then you don`t have to be in my wedding!" I threatened, feeling that this would give me the upper hand in the argument. Elise sighed, groaning and rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger as if she`d been arguing with a child.

"Jillian, just listen to-"

"No!" I put my hand up, "No, I`m not listening. Get out."

"But Jill-"

"Out!" I raised my voice, jabbing my finger to the door leading into her room on the other side of the bathroom. She rolled her eyes and let out another exasperated sigh before calling over her shoulder,

"He doesn`t love you!"

"Ha!" I mock-laughed as she slammed the door behind her, letting out another frustrated cry from inside her room. I lifted my middle finger in the direction of her bedroom door before slipping under water so that I could let out an exasperated scream of my own without having the entire building in a tizzy.

Elise had planted that seed of doubt in me now, even if it wasn`t true, I would be obsessing over the idea that Daisuke didn`t love me, the constant reminder always in the back of my head. I cursed my sister angrily, draining the tub and getting out, wrapping a towel around my head and slipping into my robe. What had gotten into her? Was she really jealous?

My eyes lingered on the door leading to my bathroom as I sat on my bed in my underwear, waiting for my hair to dry a little more before putting on my pajamas. I wanted to get up and apologize to Ellie. I always felt so guilty after getting in arguments with my sister. We had always been so close, when we argued we usually immediately silently forgave each other and laid the issue to rest, but this felt different. The issue wouldn`t be laid to rest. I needed to know why she was so against my engagement as she`d been thrilled by it initially.

Something about her confrontation was misplaced, as Elise and I never had an argument unless I was the one to start them. Usually she just slid by without angering me, doing anything in her power to be neutral in any situation between us. This time she`d come to me. Maybe something really was wrong…

But I was too afraid to know the truth, and that was one of my biggest faults; Denial. I looked around my room, taking in every bare inch illuminated by my bed side lamp. I wanted to crawl into bed with Elise so badly out of the fear I had of my own subconscious, but she didn`t always shower off before getting in her bed. My OCD wouldn`t be comfortable with that unless I could wash the sheets before. Elise was probably pissed enough already that she would hardly let me sleep in her bed with her, let alone make her wait while I put clean sheets on her bed. I whined, burying my face in my hands.

I slipped into my pajamas and crawled under my comforter, shutting the light off and revealing the soft glow of the nightlight I`d plugged into the socket across the room. The room looked innocent, cozy. Safe, though I knew it wasn`t even with the light on. I had trouble getting my eyes to close and stay closed with every creak and pipe that made noise due to the people living next to and below us. I overreacted to every shadow that came through my window from the cars on the street below, not allowing myself to fall asleep for hours.

Only to find that sleep was no escape from my terror either.

* * *

_We don`t have much time before Shuichi gets here._

Thank fucking god, I thought to myself as I floated in the darkness, with no other companion in the dreaming state besides Youko Kurama.

When the hell was he going to go back to Shuichi anyway?

_Do I really need to remind you that this is only necessary because or your own reckless act on erasing the two of us from your memory._

Oh my god, I **know**. I longed for a moment of silence from him so that I didn`t have massive bags under my eyes. I was going to scare my theory class. Again.

Just thirty seconds without that voice…

_No. _Was Youko`s reply, _Let`s see, what else would be beneficial from my memory for you to see?_

Please God, no more. We should just wait for Shuichi.

_Well considering Shuichi is human and now has to break into your apartment without my help, we`re going to start without him. _

I sighed, relishing the last few seconds of peace before I felt my subconscious whirring around me, as if I was on a merry-go-round that was being spun too fast, the eye of a cyclone.  
And then we touched down, feet feeling as if they were made of led.

I stumbled my way around as I felt gravity pull my feet to the ground, putting my hands out to keep my from falling. I fell to my knees, looking around. Why wasn`t I in the cave?

_Because this is your memory. This is your side of the story._

"Don`t you get weak on us too, girl," Genkai rasped from behind me, and I looked back to see that she, Yana, Kaito and Amanuma were standing beside me. Botan`s human shell laid on the ground behind us.

"I`m fine, just a little tired." I replied as I turned my head back to the dark cave. If this was my memory, than anytime now the boys and Elise would be coming back. I felt my body shaking with anticipation. The memory was a little hazy for my, and I couldn`t understand why. I remembered the others just fine.

Why were we in my subconscious anyway? I thought Youko was teaching me a lesson by going through his subconscious…?

_There`s valuable information here that is surprisingly running parallel to the present._

Huh, I thought as I stared with everyone else into the blackness of the cave mouth, awaiting for our heroes to return. If they were going to return. I remember Elise diving so bravely into the tunnel to the Makai, without a single thought. I remembered screaming until I`d awakened myself.

What had been so important for me to relive?

_I want you to remember the emotion you felt in this moment._

Now even more curious, I began to grow anxious as the minute ticked past. Youko was like the Ghost of Christmas past, only in a fucked up demon form that had merged his soul onto mine, which was creepy as hell and disgusting—

_I resent that._

—Anyway, what could have been so significant?

A figure emerged from the cave, footsteps sending my anxiety into a panic. I knew it was not anyone I truly cared to see, but the memory had me somewhat on autopilot, and I found my feet pounding forward to meet the tall blonde boy that had just exited the cave.

I grabbed Mitari down by the collar of his stupid, yellow jacket and began interrogating him intensely, demanding to know if Elise and the boys were alright. He panicked, eyes wide and in fear of my temper.

"Jeez, Jill," Botan`s voice rang through my ears and I was jerked back by blue-haired woman, letting go of Mitari and freeing him from my choke hold. So she`d returned from informing Enma of the earthquake. I remembered that much on my own.

"You`re going to make the kid pee in his pants." Her lowered voice rung through my ears as I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself, but it was no use. I was shaking with anticipation. What about Yusuke? What about my sister?!

_You really do let your dreams swallow you whole, don`t you? You really mean you don`t remember the significance of this moment?_

Shut up, I scolded inwardly to Youko, I couldn`t control anything. He knew that, I knew that, everyone on this side of town knew that about me. The fact that he continued to taunt and tease was really starting to get on my nerves.

"They`ve all departed for Demon World," Mitari informed us, "Sensui`s still alive as far as I know. Before I blacked out, I remembered the soldiers from the Reikai trying to exterminate Yusuke, but when I`d awakened he and Koenma were both gone."

"So they made it out alive, thank Heavens!" Botan exclaimed. I darkened at this comment. What if they hadn`t? Which was a silly thought, because I knew they had all survived another toss with the enemy, but the autopilot setting I was stuck on apparently did not have a switch off. I was feeling several emotions at once.

"Not exactly," Mitari looked down, shutting his eyes tightly, "Yusuke was dead before they showed up, but they were going to terminate him… for good measure."

I didn`t need to look up at Botan`s face to know the shocked expression that was plastered on it. I felt tears burn my eyes as I began to mourn Urameshi, sinking to my knees once more, crumbling and falling apart. No one touched me, not even Genkai uttered a cold word to me as I sobbed over the boy who I`d always been fond of. Like a poltergeist, my thoughts hovered over the initial thoughts I`d had that day, what I had felt before I knew they would make it out alive.

I still couldn`t see the point of this. When was Shuichi going to get here?

_You really do need everything spelled out for you, don`t you?_

Finally too frustrated to keep the anger inside and directed at the soul sharing my body, I shouted in rage and beat my fist into the gravel, bloodying my knuckles. To everyone else, they just scratched it up to my grieving over Yusuke.

_Love is not just affection, Jillian. _

Ha! Like Youko Kurama knew anything of love. Ha! Ha!

…

I waited for his reply, but nothing came. Had I really silenced the great demon thief? I waited for his reply as I remained curled up on the ground. There was nothing as my oblivious dreaming form kept sobbing on the ground over Urameshi. I felt Botan slipping to her knees as she wrapped an arm around my shoulder, devastated as well.

_Do you feel that?_

Feel _what_?

_The weight of the sorrow in your chest. Do you remember how it felt to grieve your friend?_

If I didn`t, would I have been curled up in the dirt sniveling and wailing like an idiot?

_How do you think everyone reacted when they were informed you had detached yourself form them completely? _

Laying the guilt trip on there, thick, huh _Pal_?

_You should know all about 'guilt trips', as you`ve put Shuichi through more than enough._

This was getting ridiculous. I wasn`t going to listen to the very selfish being that had possessed Shuichi`s human body, forcing his soul alongside the boy because he was too cowardly to face his own demise after living for so long already. He had nothing to teach me. The only thing old people knew how to do was die, and apparently Youko didn`t even know how to do that. If he couldn`t stand me, then why didn`t he just let his soul rot in someone else`s corpse and leave Shuichi and I alone?

_Because I am as much Shuichi as he is Kurama. _

Riveting excuse for your cowardice, Youko.

_You want to hear my excuse, is that it?_

Not really, I thought, I preferred not to hear any more from him.

_You were so quick to accuse me of not knowing a thing about love when you are the spitting image of a self indulgent, little girl that spews the word around as if it were the next spread in your trendy, Tokyo fashion magazines. _

Wait, I—

_Silence, girl! You want to know what I know of love? As if I could remain cold to the only other being I had forced myself on? Shuichi Minamino was the only being I thought I could ever love. First out of force did I make myself love the boy, as I would have been miserable had I not accepted him as my new form. The boy is intelligent, sensitive and sensible. _

_And then Shiori, who endured my possession with open arms. With every cold gesture I directed towards her through her son, she took like a martyr and continued to care for us with unconditional love. Even when Shuichi`s father passed away, she maintained her position as an independent single mother and never let her pain show. The truest form of unselfish and unconditional love. _

_And then you walked in with your father, I remember the first moment I looked at the uppity glance you gave Shuichi and I, your button nose sticking in the air as if you were the Duchess of Wales. I thought you were the most shallow, vain, human girl I`d ever encountered in my life._

I was certain that he still thought that way of me.

_Wrong again. You see, if I still bore those feelings, I would not have suffered the agony of inserting myself into this mess. No, if you hadn`t proved me wrong, I would have gladly suffered through a coma with a brain-dead Shuichi, who I am much obliged to spending the next century with in silence, as he is first and foremost my home and sanity in the cage that is the human body. _

_Of course, you were hell to endure over the first few months, with your constant bitching and feminine rituals and over everything else—the disregard you held for my mother, who had taken you in as her own when you were not fortunate enough to be graced with such care from your own pathetic father and your mentally ill mother. Like Shuichi, she opened her arms to you and got you to open up, even if you did pour out all of your hatred on our small family. It was when I realized that you hated yourself more than anyone else could hate you that I realized you weren`t all that bad. It wasn`t long before Shuichi found himself attracted to you. I didn`t blame him, as he is still very much human. However, his attraction to you was not based solely on hormones, as he began to care for you as much as his human mother had. He felt responsible for your well being, felt it his own personal duty to cater to you. Which is why risked our lives for the sake of returning your memories to you. _

_As for my own personal feelings toward you, I admit it that I had pure, sexual desire at first. If I was going to suffer through his reoccurring romantic thoughts of you, I figured I might as well have amused myself by warping his innocent thoughts of you at times. Of course, I found myself being enticed by the better half of your personality eventually, just in time for you to do a one eighty and go back to acting like a five year old like you had when we`d first met._

I hoped he didn`t expect an apology for my spoiling his attraction to me. I felt insulted, dirty at these words. Good to know that the demon influence of Shuichi only kept from severing our relationship because he wanted to get laid.

_Oh, don`t be crass, now. I know that it`s hard for you to resist, but that statement was not true in the slightest. Actually, it`s kind of amuses me how you worded it. I also keep you around for a good laugh, you know._

His chuckle rang through my head as I lifted my face to the sound of footsteps drawing near. Botan was the first to greet the boys, her ecstatic voice reaching my ears before I lifted my eyelids.

"You`re alive!" She shouted, and I opened my eyes to the sight of Yusuke leading the pack of sullen looking boys, who had maintained a sober air in the light of having the victory over Sensui.

And then I saw the reason behind the saddened faces.

Behind the resurrected demon form of hair and tribal markings that was now Yusuke Urameshi, stood the Prince of the Reikai himself, his hair falling in his eyes, looking down at the limp body lying in his arms.

Cruise control set to one hundred and twenty miles per hour, the memory of all the pain and agony hit me like a racecar plowing its way around the track. The wind was knocked from my lungs as I took in the sight of my baby sister lying dead in the arms of Koenma, her body battered and bloody, white-blonde hair stained with blood and sweat. Her clothes tattered, shirt falling off of her body, I pulled my jacket off and managed to stand, making my way through the boys.

"Jillian," Shuichi reached out to comfort me, pull me to him, but I only ran past him to my sister as Koenma laid her on the ground before me. Finally the dam burst and the tears poured from my eyes as I sunk to the ground, covering my sister with the jacket, wrapping it around her limp body and zipping her up. Once I had finished, I pulled Elise into my lap, holding her in my arms and rocking her back and forth as I sobbed into her shoulder so hard that I thought I might burst. I started to wail, screaming and choking between broken sobs as I clutched the girl to me.

All of our childhood memories came rushing to me, every moment we`d bonded over flashed behind my eyes as the tears came pouring out, soaking the jacked I`d just dressed her in. I couldn`t bear the thought of never hearing her voice again, or watching her hit a tennis ball. Elise was the only person in my life that I thought I would have forever, that would never desert me because she was the only person that loved me when I was unlovable. Regardless of how ugly I`d gotten, how vicious my words could get, she held my hand through all the pain, made me laugh when I was crying and was closer to me than any best friend I`d ever had.

I remembered the thoughts I`d had when I was really in front of that cave, holding my dead sister. All I could think to myself was—

_Please don`t leave me all alone._

Mind racing a million miles a minute, and cut short by Youko`s voice. How did he know that was what I`d been thinking?

_Because I know you, Jillian. _

It was true though. Whether I had Shuichi or not was not nearly as critical to me as having my sister. I realized then that I never trusted anyone, including Shuichi, completely like I had Elise. And in that moment I ached with loneliness because I knew I could never, ever connect with a human being like I had Elise without being humiliated or embarrassed, no matter who entered into my life, I would never open up to them the way I had with her.

_And I was standing right there…_

This new voice was not from Youko Kurama, but Shuichi himself. He had arrived, and overheard my thoughts. No doubt those words had hurt him.

A hand was placed on my back, and I knew from memory that it was Botan again.

"I`m going to the Reikai to look for her," She spoke softly to me as I hyperventilated, breath catching as I cried into the shell that had once been my sister. I felt the sun peaking through the clouds, but I still felt cold with it`s light upon my back.

"Bring her to me as soon as you can, Botan," I looked up through burning eyes to see Koenma still standing above us, fists clenched tightly to his sides.

"You`re fired, Ume!" He shouted down at the girl I was cradling in my arms, letting his immature, toddler side show through the adult form he`d taken.

"I will _never_ forgive you for this!"

His voice cracked as he shouted down at her, and her peaceful, blank expression never faltered the entire time. I felt strong arms wrap around me, and I knew it was Shuichi pulling me from my sister, to my dismay.

"Let me go!" I shrieked into the red head`s ear as he lifted me up, pulling me over his shoulder and rubbing my back as he carried me away from the only person that made me feel loved in my entire life.

"Koenma, do something! Bring her back to life!" I called out to the Prince, who was hunched over the girl, tears streaming from his face as well. None of the boys spoke, and I noticed Kuwabara tearing up, looking away so that no one would notice.

"Why can`t he bring her back?!" I had turned to Genkai now, struggling to look over my shoulder, in the direction Shuichi was facing. I noticed Amanuma was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, staring guiltily at me. I narrowed my eyes when ours met, and I began to take my anger out on the boy after I had figured out why Koenma couldn`t save Elise.

"You don`t deserve to be here, you little shit!" I started screaming, and a look of horror dawned his face as I began to pound my fists on Shuichi`s back to escape. He didn`t budge, much stronger than I could ever dream to be.

"Jillian, shhh," He tried to hush me, but I began to struggle more in his arms, turning so that I could better yell at the little boy,

"Elise should have lived! Koenma wasted his energy on you, you pathetic little asshole! That was my fucking sister!"

"Kurama, you need to get her out of here." Genkai`s voice was heard above my own sobbing and Amanuma`s cries of guilt.

"Jillian, if you don`t stop struggling I`m going to have to force you to be still." Shuichi warned as I continued to thrash and kick my legs. Like I gave a flying fuck at the moment, all I could think about was that my sister was dead.

I was placed on the ground a moment later, and Shuichi drew back from me so that he could sufficiently knock me into the blackness once more.

I`d awakened hours later in a foreign room, on a futon on the floor. Even with the boy`s arms locked around me, I felt the hole inside of me growing and eating me alive in agonizing pain. I started sobbing, quietly and then growing louder until he`d awakened.

Shuichi pulled me to him again, attempting to shush me as I rolled onto him, laying my head on his chest as I wrapped my arms around his neck tightly, trying to get as close as I could so that I could fill the void that was ripping through me.

We were at Genkai`s, I`d recollected.

_I had to take you somewhere. Mother would have asked too many questions, and your apartment was out of the question, as Elise`s belongings would be lying around and too tempting to go through. Besides, Genkai let you mourn properly without a word. _

Shuichi`s soothing voice was relieving to hear again, a ray of light shining through the darkness that these dreams enveloped me in. These were dark memories, when I thought I`d never see Elise again. I had fallen apart. I was embarrassed to be reliving these memories, especially with Shuichi and Youko invading in on my thoughts. I spent weeks at Genkai`s temple, sitting, staring at the wall, the trees, the sea. Nothing mattered except me and my misery.

There comes a point when you`re so tired of crying that you exhaust yourself for a while. Sometimes people fall back asleep when this happens. I stayed awake, moaning into Shuichi`s shirt as his hands stroked up and down my back while I laid, half alive and on top of him.

Eventually I fell back asleep, and he left to make food for us, which I didn`t eat. I could hardly stomach the events from earlier, how was I expected to eat? I didn`t leave the room, just stared at the tray he`d set in front of me.

"Yukina`s making tea," He informed me, stroking my hair as he stood over me. Shuichi leaned over, inspecting my face. I was blank, haggard and starting to grow numb to everything around me. It was only the beginning of my grieving process.

"I can pick up your Celexa tomorrow when I run into town. We`ll just have to call the doctor for another prescription. Let him know what`s happened."

"I won`t take it." Was my reply.

_This is where our relationship went to shit._ Youko piped up from the background somewhere, and I began to tear up again in my dreaming form, curling into a ball again, tucking my head against my knees, letting my hair fall over my shins as I broke out into another sob. He was right. I neglected Shuichi so badly when all he had tried to do for me was care.

"What do you mean, you won`t take it?"

"I—" Hiccup, "—I need to be sad."

_I never understood that._ Shuichi said form somewhere inside my head as well, _The medicine would have helped._

_I understand, _Youko hissed, though he and Shuichi were still disconnected, _The need to wallow in self pity was to strong._

Neither, I verified for the both of them.

The funny thing about Celexa, or really, any anti-depressant, was that when you were actually sad for a reason-it still repressed that sadness. You knew in your heart you were sad, but felt nothing because the drugs wouldn`t allow you to. The feelings came and went as phantoms, and it made you numb, colder as the medicine familiarized itself with the feelings and learned how to block them from your head. I wanted to feel, I didn`t want to use the medicine to take the pain that I rightfully felt for Elise away from me.

Shuichi bent down and placed a kiss atop my head before walking over to the door, sliding it open.

"Yukina will have the tea ready in a few minutes. I`m going to have a chat with Hiei."

He looked back, watching with wary eyes.

_I shouldn`t have left you like that._ Shuichi`s guilt echoed down the hallways of my mind. I shook my head, not lifting it from my knees.

The door slid shut behind him, and I slid to the floor, curling into the fetal position.


	10. Limbo

Heads turned as the sound of a lonely applauder clapped an uneven tempo from the back of the room. Dr. Eguchi squinted to make out the face of the intruder that dared to interrupt his precious orchestra rehearsal.

I had to shift in my seat to look over the two rows of the remaining violin section seated behind me just to catch a glimpse of his face. A boy, possibly of eighteen years scanned the room with large, walnut colored irises. The scowl on his face was unmistakably that of someone with the mental capacity of a child. He dressed like a typical greaser—light wash jeans, sneakers, and an unbuttoned, dark wash denim shirt thrown on over a slouchy crew neck. Tall, tan, the only maintenance put into his hair was a dollop of gel to the palm just before slicking the dark brown strands back with his fingers.

"This is a private rehearsal, young man," Dr. Eguchi towered over his score, menacingly.

"Sorry sir, I just need to borrow Jill for one second."

I whipped around to meet the eyes of the conductor. I felt a thousand eyes all over me as I looked up at him, sweat from my palm forcing the neck of my violin to slid a little in my tight grip.

"One of my best chairs?" Dr. Eguchi reiterated, seeming much more appalled than I knew him to really be. He was kidding, not having favoritism among his students. He was known for his dry sense of humor and excellent work ethic when it came to working with undergrads. He looked down at me, pretending to be incredibly serious while barking,

"You have one second."

With these words, he raised his baton and called out the rehearsal number he wanted to start over at within the Fugue we had just run through. I was lucky he didn`t allow the rest of the instrumentalists stare me down as I maneuvered my way through the maze of musicians to make my way to this strange boy.

I followed the juvenile into the hallway, shutting the door slowly behind me as to not create a ruckus and throw anyone off. I turned to the sight of the boy ogling my violin-or more so, the hand holding onto it.

"So where`s the ring?"

It took me a moment to understand what he`d been talking about. I glanced down to the hand curled around the neck of my instrument and then back to his face.

"I take my ring off when I play, it throws me sound off, and—" I stopped myself, realizing that I didn`t owe this stranger an explanation.

"I`m sorry, who did you say you were?"

Fierce eyes were framed by furrowed, black brows as the disgruntled expression crossed his face.

"When Keiko told me what you did, I didn`t want to believe. But I guess it should have been expected." He scoffed, shaking his head a little,

"I like to mess with people as much as the next guy, but what you did was just plain stupid."

I let out a nervous laugh, cocking my head a little,  
"I think you have the wrong girl, kid."

"No, you`re definitely Jillian Beckett," He leaned forward, inspecting me from head to toe. I stepped back a little, ready to bash the punk across the head if he dared to get too close.

"Yeah, you`re outfit is pretentious enough. Smell like her too." He observed, reaching into his back pocket, retrieving a cassette tape. He gestured for me to take it, but I only stared.

"Take it. Maybe it will jog your memory. Whatever you didn`t fry."

He shoved it at me once more, and I snatched it from him with the hand I was using to hold my bow, supported at the frog by my index finger.

"If I didn`t know that you`re a decent person under all that whiny, high maintenance crap, I wouldn`t have given you that tape. So make sure you listen to that, okay?"

Whiny?

High maintenance?

"Eh-hey, don`t look at me like that!" The boy`s harsh features turned innocent, guilt ridden as he backed away from me. I hadn`t done anything but stand, confused as he roasted me for being… a girl.

Anger finally set in, and I sucked in the air to my lungs, enraged and ready to fire away at this punk that _didn`t know me._

"Listen here, asshole," I spat, chucking his tape at him, "You can take your fucking jam session—"

He juggled the tape in his hands as he tried to grasp onto it, sweating a little as I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, throwing my shoulders back to look as tall as I possibly could,

"—Or whatever that is, and you can get your raggedy ass out of here." I turned back to the door leading into the orchestra room, the Fugue bleeding through the cracks.

"Wait, Jill," Rough fingers wrapped around my arm as I walked away, pulling me back around with great force. I gaped at the lack of civility the kid had, trying not to rip my arm out of his hand in concern for my instrument.

"Who do you think you are, prick?!" I raised my voice at him, but I went ignored.

"I went to a lot of trouble to get this tape to you," His words bled together as he rushed to get his point across,

"This is your voice on this tape, there`s no mistake. You don`t remember—"

"Oh, for the love of—"

"—doing it—Jill, hey—don`t you ever feel like something`s missing?"

My lips pursed, and my head cocked to the side at this peculiar slob standing before me, desperation haunting his walnut colored eyes.

He forced the cassette back into my empty hand, using both of his own hands to curl my fingers around the little, black rectangle.

"If you want answers, then you need this tape."

* * *

**X — Limbo**

**Pain, make your way to me.**

**And I will always be just so inviting.**

There was shuffling as the tape started. I turned the volume on the dial up a little too far, flinching at the sound of a man`s voice coming through the speakers,

"_Start from the beginning, Jill_."

"_Okay… Well, we met in grade school. I never liked him at first. I assumed him to be completely pompous and arrogant. In a way, I guess he was at some times. He was decent to our classmates, reserving his cold manners for me alone. Still, all of the horny girls in our class fell over him left and right because of his looks. I still don`t understand why they thought he was so attractive. Don`t get me wrong, he was attractive. Is attractive. He is attractive._

_I guess I always thought him such a bore, I never saw what the other girls saw. I thought him to be metrosexual in a way, figured him to be attracted to other boys what with his feminine features and all that hair and…__Messing with Shuichi was just so much more fun than trying to get him to notice me. I didn`t care about a relationship then. I just wanted to have fun. And I did."_

The boy had been right. It was unmistakably my voice on the tape, but I had not remembered recording it. Or who the hell I was talking about.

I sat, parked outside of the music building at ten thirty in the company car my dad had let me have when he was away. I listened to the strange recording while the rain poured down on the roof and the windows.

"Don`t you ever feel like something`s missing?"

He had been right. I knew something was off. The dreams I could hardly recall in the morning that left me so devastated, screaming for my sister. I had another episode the night before, the worst one yet.

I had woken up again, screaming about my sister who I had dreamt of dying for the second time. I burst into Elise`s room and found it empty. I didn`t know that my sister had gone for her usual morning run, I thought she had really died. Long story short, I had made such a fuss that the neighbors thought someone was being murdered in our apartment. The police barged in only a few minutes before my sister arrived home, sweaty and sent into a panic when she saw the police in our doorway.

"_His mom was my dad`s secretary for the longest time… He was the one that introduced her to Hatanaka. She was always at my father`s side, and he paid her much more than a regular salary. He knew she was raising a kid on her own. My dad`s a real softie sometimes. Of course, Shiori did take care of me most of the time he would be away on trips or working late. I had almost forgotten my real mom. I replaced her with Shiori. I always thought that was the reason Shuichi hated me."_

Shuichi? Hadn`t I heard that name somewhere?

The girl on the tape paused, inhaling a staggered breath,

"_I hated him too. Well, I didn`t hate him. I didn`t bother hating him, you know? I just hated being around him. He always had this habit of calling me out to my face about my flaws. I couldn`t stand it. I knew what was wrong with me, and it felt like he was tearing me down every time he pointed it out. He knew it hurt me, he didn`t care."_

Call me out for what…? I thought, debating whether I should start the engine, drive home. I watched as the numbers on the digital clock changed from ten thirty four to ten thirty five PM as the tape played on. I couldn`t decipher it. I knew that the voice was my own, but I knew that I had never said these words. Who was Shuichi?

I felt like bashing my head off the steering wheel.

"_But he grew out of it. I don`t know, maybe he felt sorry for me. I do that, you know. Everyone knows that I`m manipulative. I don`t mean to be, but I guess that`s what a manipulative person would say… Oh, I don`t know. It was probably when I finally put together his little secrets, his weird, demonic history and blah, blah, blah. I think he was afraid of what I would say to people. Figured that I was some blabbermouth. I`m not that stupid, I know how to keep a secret."  
_

"_When was the first time you noticed he was different?" _

"_Besides his weird looks, his broad vocabulary and his brains?" _

Who was this guy? My fingers hovered above the eject, ready to just toss the tape out the window and run it over. Whatever this aforementioned demonic drama was, I was sure I wanted no part of it.

"_He came home one night…" _I hesitated to press the button, curiosity besting me, _"He had a stab wound that ran clean through his torso, bleeding out on the other side. I`d seen enough horror movies to know that a person—a normal person—doesn`t survive that kind of thing without immediate medical attention, you know? But he acted as if it was a bad paper cut. The next day when he came downstairs for breakfast he seemed perfectly healthy. _

_Then there was the day that I had passed out at the library and had woken up in the backyard, soaking wet with Shuichi force feeding me chewed up grass. I was so freaked out… I pretended to be asleep. That`s when Hiei showed up, and they started talking about some weird demonic possession shit. It didn`t end there. He used his power to freak me out on purpose once when we were walking to my apartment. Wrapped a vine around my face. And then his stomach was still injured, six months after the first stomach wound he`d gotten."_

My head pounded as I tried to recall the memories. Nothing was there. There was emptiness, but nothing to show for it. I hardly remembered my high school years. Or much else after my father and I had moved.

Something told me all of this was very real.

"_None of it sunk in until I went to the tournament. That was when I finally accepted the truth for what it really was, instead of suppressing it like I had up until then. At that point I was in too deep to dig myself out. By then I had become somewhat… dependent on Shuichi. I`m weird when I fall in love, I… Change completely. I don`t know who I am, or what I`m supposed to do without the other person. I had always limited myself so this never happened. Look at what`s happened, Koenma. I`m a mess. This is who I am when I get emotionally attached to someone. I`m falling apart. I had no choice but to do this. It`s so, __**I`m**__ so pathetic."_

"_But even then I shut down for a little while. Tried to lock myself in the hotel. I couldn`t understand how we could allow a death tournament to just happen only so many miles offshore. I couldn`t bear to watch people I cared about being sent to death in front of an audience. When I saw him being thrown around the ring, I could only follow my impulses. I… guess that`s when I figured out that I lived my life revolving around him. I began to care so much that I sacrificed everything for the boy. My whole life was about him from then on and without him, I don`t know. I don`t know what I`m doing—"_

I shut the stereo off after I heard the familiar sound of myself break into a painful sob. I turned the key, starting the engine, ready to race home. Whoever this person was, I definitely didn`t need them messing around with my life now. I didn`t need any of it. I needed to go home, take a shower, and go to bed.

However, I didn`t throw tape out the window. I left it in the player, figuring I would be the next person to use the car anyway. I locked the doors and made my way to the elevator in the parking garage, wishing that I could turn deaf ears to what I`d just listened to.

His words swam through my head as I pulled my comforter back and climbed under the covers, turning my light out. What answers had that given me? I only had questions-repressed, but still, questions.

* * *

The waves crashed against the shore, sending another rush of cold air through me. I shivered in the sand, a brisk day in late February. It had been a week since my sister had died, and I hadn`t improved at all. If anything, I had gotten much worse as Shuichi left me to rot inside Genkai`s temple. He had gone somewhere, I couldn`t remember. Probably school. I hadn`t listened.

All I`d done was sit around, somewhat catatonic. I hadn`t seen much of Genkai, and when I did, she seemed to act as if I were a ghost. She had been pretty devastated at Elise`s death for some reason. She had never been close to the girl from what I`d remembered. For a woman so opposed to laying around and feeling sorry for oneself, she seemed to allow my sulking with open arms.

Shuichi stayed silent. He seemed put off, as if he didn`t know what to do. I guess no one really knew what to do about it. I felt him slipping away into that dark part of my mind, where I pushed the people I loved the most when I was miserable. I tortured him, my words and actions both cold and distant.

I hated myself for it.

I was missing school, not like anyone missed me. I wondered if Nagasawa was enjoying my vacation away more than I was. I almost hoped that Kitajima was torturing her for me, keeping her in line, but I knew the girl was too faint-hearted for manners as ill as mine. Everyone was. I was brash, ruthless. I was mean.

That was why Shuichi hadn`t been talking to me. I didn`t blame him if he were to leave me. It wasn`t like he was getting any, anyway. I hadn`t put on makeup since the day I`d waited outside that cave. Maybe he realized that I was ugly, fat.

Or worse, maybe he thought that I was stupid.

Curling up into a ball, pulling bare legs to my chest, I started shedding tears of self pity. Shuichi was going to leave me, and I would have no one left in the universe. I looked back out to sea, contemplating drowning in the freezing, black water.

That was the reason I wasn`t allowed to be alone. I laughed darkly to myself as I pressed my forehead against my knees. When I was alone, my thoughts possessed me. Told me to do stupid things, things I would regret. Things to make people around me feel pain.

Misery loves its company, I guess.

I was saved from myself when Yukina arrived, slipping a thick, knit blanket over my shoulders as I shuddered in the sand. I felt her cold hands reach down and smooth my dirty, unwashed hair.

"May I sit with you, Jillian-kun?"

I didn`t reply. I couldn`t find the will to open my mouth and speak. I hadn`t heard my own voice all day, and I didn`t think it was there to make use of anymore. I felt empty, empty of a heart, a soul, and any love and compassion. They had all dried up when Elise departed the living world.

Yukina sat, close to me. She wasn`t afraid of my silence. She wrapped an arm around me, squeezing both of my shoulders and running her hands up and down my arms over the blanket.

"May I confide something in you?" She asked. Yukina was far too sweet for me to treat like a piece of shit. I sucked it up and lifted my head, looking at her through sore eyes. She smiled empathetically at me.

"When I was a child, my twin brother was banished from my island. He was little, and couldn`t fend for himself."

I felt my stomach churn at her words. I didn`t know if I could make it thirty seconds in without tears streaming down my face. I pushed down my sadness as best as I could as she continued,

"Everyone was certain he had died, that there was no way he could have survived. They told everyone that he was a monster. I was told to move on and to not care."

I had never really heard the full story behind the endless search for Yukina`s brother. I should have offered to help her, but I had always been so concerned for myself. More guilt rose in my stomach as I watched the aqua strands of her hair blow in the wind. She didn`t shudder or wrap her arms around herself. The cold was nothing to her.

"But I couldn`t. In my heart, I held on to my sadness. I felt alone, and empty without him in my life."

Ruby red eyes peered out at the sea, as if it had been a warm day in August and the sun was shining instead of the dull, overcast weather that was looming over us.

She didn`t look sad. Everyone knew she was still searching for her long lost brother, but she seemed to be content without any clues to speak of.

I wanted to tell her to give it up, that she should move on and forget the past. Words I could never give myself as advice.

"I`ve never told anyone this before, Jillian, and it feels silly that I haven`t, but…" She trailed, and then looked down, a goofy smile spreading across her face.

"My brother has been right in front of me this whole time. I know that he knows I am his sister, and that I am looking for him… but he has never said a word to me. I think he`s ashamed of himself, he doesn`t want me to know his history."

I watched a single tear run down her face as she kept her smile on. I watched it, crystalizing as it fell to the sand, shining like a diamond.

I wanted to break the legs of this boy, whoever he was.

"But I know that he loves me, because he is always looking out for me. He tries to keep it a secret, but I know he`s always been watching over me, even if from arm`s length. He`s like my guardian angel."

I felt tears roll down my face at these words. I could never be that strong. I couldn`t understand the concept of love unless it was something that had materialized before my eyes. That was what my father had taught me.

"I couldn`t ever imagine how you must feel after growing up with your sister your whole life, but I do know that she wouldn`t want you to hold onto these hateful feelings that you hold for yourself. Elise would want you to be free. Do you know what I mean?"

My lip quivered as she spoke, tears draining from my eyes as I held my breath in. Yukina held me tighter, closer to her.

"She`s looking out for you like my brother is looking out for me. Here, look at my hands."

She retracted her arms, grabbing fistfuls of sand in each hand. I watched her quizzically as I wiped my eyes with the back of my own hands.

"When you hold on to all of that dirt and grime, you can`t open up and let the good in. You can`t reach out, because your hands are full. You have to open up, and let go. Let people know what you feel and get rid of the dirt."

I watched as the sand slipped through her fingers, emptying her hands completely. She reached over to my hands and took them in her own,

"Only then can you grab on to what`s important."

I laughed silently, letting out a breath of air as I did so. I had more than handfuls of dirt that had accumulated over the years. Maybe that was why I was so obsessed with trying to force cleanliness onto everything under my control. No matter how hard or often I cleaned, I still felt dirty.

And as I sat on the beach in the cold with an ice demon, I felt a little bit cleaner than I had for a while.

"Thank you, by the way," Yukina turned to me as we headed back to Genkai`s. I gave her a confused look as our footsteps slowed.

She smiled warmly at me,

"For not asking me to reveal who my brother is."


	11. A Concerto in G Minor

The tyrant could be overheard over all other noise in the studio, raging on about a missing leg warmer. A middle aged man, his five year old daughter in hand, was fuming so loudly that heads were turning to observe him as he dropped obscenities left and right, causing the concerned parents of my students into an uneasy state. I quickly tied Chihiro`s hair up in the top bun before walking the floor, excusing myself from the group of girls and over to where the parents were standing.

"Sir, is there a problem?" I stepped up to him, looking down at the little girl who`s hand was in his. One of my youngest students, Jun, looked up at me, confused by all of the commotion her father was making.

"Yeah, one of your fucking kids took my daughter`s legwarmer!" He gestured to the group of my girls, and I felt my entire body tense at the absurd accusation he had made. And what if one of them had taken the legwarmer? They were children.

"Excuse me, Sir," I nearly had to bite my tongue clear off to keep from firing off obscenities back. The amount of self control I had while teaching was alarming, considering I had always been the first person in a room to fly off the handle in high school.

"But you don`t have to talk to me that way. There are little ears in this studio, and if you can`t control yourself then I`ll have to ask you to leave."

"And who gave you the authority? You`re a fucking student, you should show some respect. I`m sure this class is paying for your tuition. I`m going to march up to the office and file a complaint." He threatened, getting even redder in the face. I wasn`t intimidated by him at all, complaint or no complaint.

"As long as you are removed from this studio, I don`t care who you complain to." I waved at him, gesturing to the door,

"Go on. Take your filthy mouth somewhere else. Shame on you for talking that way in front of poor Jun-chan."

"I`m going to make sure you aren`t allowed to step foot in another mother fucking University again when I`m done," He continued to threaten me, and I couldn`t help but chuckle in his face. There was no way that the main office would waste a moment on him with that mouth.

Angered by my lack of regard for him, he released his daughter`s hand and balled a fist, pulling it back to aim for me. Everything moved in slow motion before my eyes. I didn`t flinch, didn`t try to duck. I felt my body become relaxed, ready to take the blow to my face.

But instead of taking the blow, I reached for the man`s arm, sliding to the right of his fist as I pulled him over my shoulder with ease, flinging him behind me and onto the hard, wood floor.

Everyone was silent as they stared down at the man, gasping for air as I had knocked it out of him. Even I stared, shocked by my own actions. I knew that I wasn`t strong enough to pull a stunt like that off successfully, as the man was at least twice my height and weight. I gaped down at the man with the other students, and parents staring from him to me.

Chihiro`s mother stepped over to me as I was still absorbed in myself. She slipped a hand onto my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze.

"Don`t worry about him, I`m going to talk to the office myself."

Her words were reassuring, but I was still in awe of what I had done to the man. Even as the campus police made their way into my studio and dragged the man out, I found it hard to break out of the trance even then.

I was frightened of myself, because I was certain that I had not been in control of my actions in that moment.

I was scared of what else I was capable of.

* * *

**XI—A Concerto in G Minor  
****Every night I try my best to dream, tomorrow makes it better.  
****Then wake up to the cold reality that not a thing has changed.**  


The Bruch Concerto was the hardest piece of music I `d been assigned yet. The sheet music glared, filled with sharp, black lines with their intimidating markings and runs. My head was beginning to hurt just looking at it, my left hand beginning to cramp up.

I sighed, massaging my palm, trying to get the blood flowing to my cold fingers, praying they would warm up before I got up in studio class and made a complete fool out of myself. I had spent all night practicing, not making it home from the music hall`s practice rooms until around 3 in the morning.

Not that I would have been able to sleep after what had happened in my studio the day before. I couldn`t stop worrying over whether I would break whatever I touched.

My fingertips had turned black from where they`re pressed down against the neck of my violin. I`d tried to scrub them out in the shower, but they remained all the same. I was beginning to wonder if they were more bruised than discolored. I could feel my body was exhausted, I`d had a few energy drinks when I`d woken up this morning, praying they`d last me through this last class.

I stepped up to the stand on the auditorium stage, gazing out at my peers. Sitting in the back row was our professor, who was extremely encouraging and very sweet. She had been patient with me and this piece so far this semester, and was impressed with how fast I was improving under her instruction. She beamed proudly at me on stage as I fitted the violin on my shoulder, holding it against me with my chin. I wiped my sweaty palm on my skirt before I lifted it to the neck, placing my fingers in the correct position. I looked over at my accompanist, Yu Ming. She smiled, and I nodded at her to begin.

I heard the first few menacing tremolos of the accompaniment, which hadn`t been easy for Yu Ming to learn either. She played flawlessly, finishing the intro and then silencing the piano. I felt myself tense as my stomach did flips. I swayed the bow down at my side, trying to loosen up briefly before lifting it to the string, pulling it down across them slowly; the calm before the storm. Yu Ming played another short piano interlude, and I played another easy run before we were both off to the races, our fingers flying.

The notes began to blur after some time, and I tried to play my best from memory. However, the edges of my vision began to darken, and I felt my arms drop to my side. There was a hollow clang as my violin and bow fell the ground beside me, and the accompaniment halted. I heard Yu Ming`s bench screech across the stage as it was pushed back just before I completely slipped from consciousness.

I awoke moments later, the stage lights beating down on me. I could feel myself breaking out in a cold sweat. All I could see was light, and hear voices. One specifically, calling out above the others. It took me a moment to focus in and attune my ears to orders being spoken above me by the mature, frightened voice of my violin professor. She was instructing one of my peers to send for the paramedics. She was slowly lifting the t shirt from my back, lightly tugging it up to try and cool me off. I focused in and found my face buried into my elbow, which was splotched with a few drops of blood.

"I`m going to puke." Was all that I could murmur, feeling weakened by speaking. Immediately I could feel my hair being tied back by her long, thin fingers. I could hear the hollow metal clang as the trash can was set down beside me, tilted in my direction. I managed to prop myself up onto my elbows as I my stomach flipped and twisted, forcing out all of its contents into the garbage. I felt the familiar sting of tears in my eyes, as vomiting always made me teary eyed. When I`d emptied my stomach completely, I laid my head back down. Dr. Kujira rubbed my back, trying to sooth me.

"Jillian, can you hear me?" She asked. I nodded briefly in response to her. She patted my back, "Jill, the paramedics are on their way."

Embarrassed at the thought of being carried out on a stretcher, I immediately opened my eyes and began to prop myself back up. I crawled to a sitting position on the wood flooring of the stage, letting my eyes adjust to the light. I felt Dr. Kujira`s firm grasp on my shoulders, as if she were making sure she was propping me up securely. She hovered over me, her face wrinkled with concern.

"You were doing so well, too!" She laughed lightly, "That concerto is really coming along. Don`t you guys think so?" She looked out to the audience where the other violin performance majors were sitting, and they all began to clap reassuringly. I laughed a little to myself, shaking my head, knowing they were only trying to make me feel better.

Dr. Kujira began to wipe a tissue across my face, and I notice it was stained with blood.

"You got a little nose bleed when you hit your head. It looks like it`s stopped now."

The auditorium doors flung open and two men carrying a stretcher came down to the front, making their way up the stairs to the stage. They set the stretcher down and began to examine me, asking me a million questions a minute. What I`d done that day, what I`d eaten, what medication I was taking, all to which I answered to my best ability. I refused to let them carry me out on the stretcher, too embarrassed at the very thought. I managed to stand with the help of one of the paramedics, and they walked me out and into the sunlight.

After a few moments of breathing the air and soaking in the rays of the sun, I began to feel a little more like myself. The paramedics still insisted that I ride with them to the clinic to get a check out. I sat in the back of the ambulance, leaning my head back against the wall behind me as I sat, the vehicle lulling me to sleep. I quickly lost consciousness once more.

I awakened to a white light, bright enough to bring forth the screaming pain in my frontal lobe. I sucked in a breath of air as if it had been the first in ten years. I heard a voice and turned my head to find myself staring into the green eyes of an unfamiliar boy. Immediately I locked up, panicking. I tried to sink further back into the chair I was lying back in.

"There she is." He smiled at me with perfect, white teeth, but all that I could see were fangs, his eyes and the bright light from behind him.

"I don`t know you," I gasped, my voice shaking with fear, "Who are you? I don`t know you!" I shouted, struggling to get out of the chair. Hands pressed down on me. I had passed out before when having blood drawn for lab tests. I never took them well, always awakening completely alarmed and frightened, as if I was surrounded by aliens. It took me a few moments to gather my bearings before I could remember what had happened. Not only that, but I always, always threw up afterwards.

All the sudden my stomach began to churn again, twisting and writhing inside of me, more painful than it ever had before.

I let out a loud moan, "Why does it hurt so bad, what-" was all I managed to get out behind gritted teeth, still unsure of what was going on. I let out another pained yelp and more voices started talking over me, gripping my arms, trying to keep me down. I was too weak to get up. Weak, and scared. Terrified for what seemed forever as white light and pure pain as I held myself together, groaning.

"Shuichi, go get something for her to eat, quickly." A female voice ordered. The name was familiar. Shuichi. Shuichi…?

" _At that point I was in too deep to dig myself out. By then I had become somewhat… dependent on Shuichi. I`m weird when I fall in love, I… Change completely."_

Shuichi was the name of the boy on the tape. But it was familiar elsewhere, too. How many Shuichi`s had I known?

I forced my eyes open, realizing I was in the clinic, laying on a bed, propped up slightly. Not enough to be completely sitting up, but not lying flat. I looked up at the short, older woman that was standing beside me, still holding onto my arm. The ID pinned to her white coat read "Fujimura, Akemi".

I could feel the cold beads of sweat running down my face, and she brushed my hair back, trying to cool me off. I leaned forward before I even knew what I was doing and wretched for the second time into the sanitary bag she had been holding in front of my face. Not much came up, as I had spewed most of my stomach contents into the trash can in the auditorium. That was why my stomach had hurt so badly the second time I`d come to..

A boy rounded the curtain that was secluding me from the other patients in the clinic, holding some sort of juice and what looked like a package of animal crackers. He was the one that had interviewed me at the clinic a couple of weeks before. I eyed the nametag pinned to his shirt that read "Minamino, Shuichi".

Dr. Fujimura shoved them at me, opening the bottle of juice and handing it to me, expecting me to drink from it and stuff my face. I just sat, still taking in my surroundings. I could hear a faint beeping noise, and I looked over to see that I had been hooked up to a heart monitor, and from the sound of it, I had a very slow pulse.

Clacking was heard on the tile floor, and Dr. Oshiro, my therapist, arrived next, with my file in her hand. Her usual, polished appearance looked a tad disheveled as she rushed into my allotted area in the ER.

She passed the folder over to Minamino as she stepped closer to me, reaching out to place her hand on my forearm.

"Hey, how ya doin?" She asked, smiling with her usual pleasant, calming charm.

"I could be better." I said flatly, causing her shoulders to shake with laughter.

I looked to the boy, who was watching one of the monitors, lips curled downwards as his eyes slid across the writing on the screen.

"Her heart rate is abnormally low for someone that isn`t an athlete…" Green eyes flickered to Dr. Oshiro. Dr. Fujimura reached for the manila folder he`d been holding, and he passed it to her, watching over her shoulder as she flipped through the pages bearing all of my personal information.

"You`re taking Celexa?" Fujimura lifted her brown eyes to mine, and I nodded slightly.

"Forty milligrams…" She murmured as she looked back at the file, frowning.

"We`re going to have to bump that down as a precaution. We`re not exactly sure what caused you to get so low…" She looked up to the monitor as she spoke, reading my heart rate. I looked as well, seeing that I was in the low thirties and panicking slightly.

"However, Celexa was recently called back for doses over sixty milligrams due to the abnormal changes in the electrical activity of the heart." She spoke slowly as she made eye contact with me. I looked from her brown eyes to the Intern`s green as she spoke, becoming increasingly nervous.

"Is that a good idea?" I managed to slur out, still feeling rather lifeless and exhausted from every limb,

"At your weight," She looked back to the file, dragging her finger down the page it was opened on, stopping halfway through,  
"A healthy dosage shouldn`t be any more than twenty. I`ll write you a prescription if that`s alright with Dr. Oshiro."

My therapist nodded without any hesitation or regard for my feelings on the subject. However, green eyes attached themselves to mine as I became increasingly upset.

"Dr. Oshiro, may I have a word?" Fujimura snapped the folder shut, handing it back to the intern boy as she gestured for my therapist to follow her outside. I watched the two disappear from behind the curtain, hushed voices fading as my ears burned to hear their conversation.

"Your emergency contact is unable to make it to the clinic,"

I looked back to the intern, blinking curiously as I tried to remember who I had listed as my emergency contact.

Oh yeah, my fiancé.

"That`s okay. I drove to the University." I sat up, swinging my legs around the bed. I still felt nauseous, even though I`d thrown up. I`d be okay, this had happened so many times before. Of course, I`d always had my dad drive me home.

"You`re sure you`re alright, then?" He asked, tucking the file under his arm to offer an arm to steady me as I stood on wobbly legs. I smiled politely as I brushed him off, slinging the violin case that had been laying on the floor next to me over my shoulder like a backpack, and then reached down for the purse that had been sitting next to it.

Minamino lead me to the front desk, watching warily as I signed myself out. I nodded at him as I placed the pen down. The way he had been eyeballing me for the past fifteen minutes was unnerving, like he was terrified I would combust before him. The longer I thought on it, the more offended I had become. He was probably assuming that I did it to myself, that I had taken some sort of drugs or starved myself. I pressed my lips into a straight line as my eyes hardened at his.

I couldn`t have gotten out from under his judgmental stare quick enough.

"_I need you to go through each item and explain their significance to your relationship with Kurama. The brain activity will be monitored so that we can create a map of what areas in your brain we need to wipe out. These objects will all be disposed of once the procedure is done."_

"_You mean I can`t keep any of them…?"_

I couldn`t resist playing the tape. So far I`d gathered that I—er, the girl on the tape, was about to have this strange boy removed from her memory by the man speaking on the tape. They were about to go through her personal belongings to spark her memories of him.

There was shuffling on the tape, silence and white noise following.

"_Well, I guess I`ll be happy to see these go." _

I could hear the sound of pages being flipped through, and the loud thump of a book falling onto a solid surface. I tightened my grip on my new prescription for Celexa, all twenty milligrams.

"_I picked these up at the bookstore. I tagged along with Shuichi to study for exams. I wish I`d never passed the psychology section…"_

"_What happened?" _

"_I didn`t think that… dealing with me was so bad until I read this. I sat down in the aisle at the bookstore and read about how dreadful living with my disorder is. How it takes these huge tolls on families and friends. How they have to walk on eggshells around me, constantly. They talk about how you`re supposed to use certain words when speaking to someone with borderline personality disorder, how you`re supposed to approach things. It`s so complicated, god forbid someone talk to me like a normal human being… I guess it was the guilt that made me so upset, so furious. I couldn`t deny any longer what a pain I`d been. He told me not to read them. We got in a fight. Well, no we didn`t. I threw a tantrum, and he ignored me."_

"_Why didn`t he want you to read the books?"_

"_He…" _

This girl was pathetic, I thought to myself. She sounded sickly, insecure. This wasn`t the person I knew myself to be. I didn`t want this girl to be real. Not really me, at the least.

But with every word she spoke, I was becoming more convinced that it was my voice coming through the speakers.

"…_Told me they weren`t for me to read. They were for people like himself, like my father and Shiori. That they would only hinder my recovery. Like I could ever really recover. You don`t fully recover from something stupid like this. He said they weren`t written to purposely upset me. He even read aloud from where the books states that most of my behavior isn`t my fault, but it only pissed me off more. And then when I got angry, he took an approach straight from this fucking book…"_

I heard the girl chuckle darkly, bitter at the memories of the argument she was recalling.

"_Can we move on, please?" _

I listened to more shuffling, the books being shoved to the side, a new object being placed between the recorder and the interviewer.

"_I forgot that I had this…" _

A lighter giggle escaped her lips,

"_Shiori had this framed for me. Shu helped me study for this test so that I wouldn`t have to retake trigonometry. She was so proud of me that she paid to have it framed." _

The tape ejected itself as I pulled into my parking spot in the garage and turned the engine off. I wasn`t sure what the weirdest piece of the information I`d just listened to was. It was definitely a tie between the fact that I couldn`t remember any of what I had recalled on tape, and the fact that I had actually passed Trig the first time around.

I silently debated whether or not I should tell Elise about the tape. It was strange, not telling her about something that personal, still. I stared at her door for an hour from the sofa, debating whether I should tell her or not. We`d been avoiding each other since the fight in the bathroom. Usually she backed down whenever we got in an argument, and that was why it felt so unsettling.

"_Your emergency contact is unable to make it to the clinic."_

I felt the butterflies fluttering around anxiously inside of me. I looked over to the phone on granite countertop, light flickering. There was a message on the machine.

"_Sorry I couldn`t make it to the clinic, give me a call when you get home." _

The receiver clicked on the opposite end of the line, and I erased the message. His job was more important than I was. Elise was right, Daisuke didn`t love me. I was going to call it off. What was the point? I didn`t matter. None of his stupid promises mattered.

Before I could think twice, the machine was in my hands, cord ripping from the outlet as I sent it flying into the wall, knocking a decorative mirror from its perch, sending that crashing to the floor as well.

I sunk against the cabinets, sobbing dramatically in my apartment, all by myself. I was starting to feel on the brink of insanity, as if my mind was being overloaded with too many emotions. Overload, error. Please reboot system.

I couldn`t get a grip on anything anymore.

I couldn`t even play the God damn Bruch Concerto in G Minor.

* * *

"What is he saying to you?" Shuichi asked as he sat across from me at the table in Genkai`s kitchen. It wasn`t exactly how the conversation had originally gone. I still felt the weight on my chest, the heartache I had from mourning my sister, who was very much alive and well in the present day.

On top of a pretty shitty day, the depression wasn`t exactly misplaced. I sighed heavily, rubbing my eyes-which were unlined, without mascara. I was embarrassed by these memories to say the least. So glad he got the pleasure of reliving how ugly I was without proper makeup or skin/hair care.

That was unfair of me to say. Let me back track. I wasn`t hideous without makeup, in fact I wouldn`t even say ugly. To be honest, I was Plane Jane. Every once in a while I would break out from stress, or hormones. It took an advanced line of skin care products to keep me from breaking out of being shiny with oil.

None of which Shuichi had brought when he went to my house to gather some belongings for the weeks I`d spent in the middle of bum fuck Egypt, aka Genkai`s.

"He`s been quiet lately. But I know he`s still here," I explained,

"Today I flipped a man over when he tried to hit me."

"You were attacked?" His eyes narrowed viciously, and I rolled my eyes, waving it off,

"Yeah, you know how parents get about their kids."

"Makes you wonder which race is more animalistic; demons or humans themselves." His fingertips brushed the handle of his tea cup, fiddling with it. I watched him as we sat quiet for a moment, trying to think of another subject to bring up.

We had originally spoken of leaving Genkai`s, but there was no point in going through that again now that Shuichi`s conscience had synced back up with his body in the dreaming state.

"Can I ask you something?" I laughed as I thought of the question that I had been aching to ask the entire time we`d been sitting at the table in that dream. Shuichi cocked his head to the side, curiously,

"I suppose." He answered, smiling wryly before taking a sip of tea. I watched him put the cup back down, swallowing before I let the question blurt from my mouth,

"How ugly am I right now? Be honest."

His lips parted slightly, struck. The fact that he was taking a long time to answer the question bothered me. His eyes narrowed and he lifted an eyebrow,

"The fact that you have the audacity to ask that is amusing. Like anyone could judge you for allowing yourself to lay aside your cosmetic routines while you mourn privately."

"That doesn`t answer my question." I drummed my fingers on the table, waiting for him to give me an honest answer. He stared back at me, eyes hardening with seriousness. He knew better than to betray my trust with words I wanted to hear, even if I was easily offended, honesty was important to me.

After I`d read those books about my disorder, the last thing I wanted anyone to do was walk on eggshells around me ever again, even if the words hurt me or my mind twisted them into several awful, unintentionally ill meanings.

"You don`t look ugly, Jillian."

"Would you sleep with me?"

His shoulders lurched forward as he bit his thumb to hold back the laughter at the bluntness of my words.

"Would you?" I pressed, laughing a little at my own question.

"You must hold a very high opinion of me if that`s what you assume I spend my time thinking on in regards to our relationship. Would you please dismiss such self conscious thoughts in the future? I am not as superficial as your mind has made me out to be, after all."

"You`re still a guy. I`m not stupid." I grumbled into my forearm as I laid my head down, groaning.

"You think that the infamous Youko Kurama would settle for someone with subpar aesthetics?" He asked, leaning his chin into his hand. I looked up to see a mischievous grin spreading across his face.

…_The fact that you needed that to be pointed out to you says a lot about your intellect, you silly girl._

"That`s it!" I slammed my fists down on the table,

"Shuichi, get him out of my head!" I snapped on the red head sitting across from me. He leaned back a little, as I about blew his head off with my shouting.

I watched as a pained, guilty expression crossed his face. It was brief, but I caught it anyway.

"What?" I pressed, watching him cautiously as he adjusted himself to his pin-straight posture once more.

"I may know how to sync him back to me, I just don`t know if it`s safe yet. If something were to go wrong, I could leave you in an unresponsive state."

"I don`t even care anymore." I spat, "Just get him out of here before I kill myself."

_Please, you`ve been making that threat since the seventh grade. _

"I`m begging you." I let my eyes plead long after I`d spoken those words. Conflicted, Shuichi scratched at a spot behind his left ear before sighing, giving in to my request.

"Give me your hands."


	12. Lost At Sea, Pt I

I regretted it instantly, feeling myself grow hazy once I`d felt the missing piece of my soul re-enter my body, filling out the empty spaces in my energy that had been missing for that past few days. I lost track of the time, not able to focus my thoughts.

I`d awakened to the warm sunlight streaming through the window. Jillian never closed the shades, as she enjoyed waking up from the sun.

It would have been peaceful, lying in the morning light next to her, but she didn`t know I was there, and more importantly, she didn`t know who I was. Except, Jillian was still unconscious, which was worrying.

She slow rise and fall of her chest was enough to tell me that she was still in a very deep, dreaming state. She looked serene, but her state was causing me to become more frantic as I counted her breaths. Why hadn`t I been able to wake myself up?

I looked over to the time on the bedside table. Elise would be home from her run in eight minutes.

I gripped Jillian`s arm, giving her a gently squeeze to see if I could get a reaction. She remained sleeping too sound to be safe.

"Jillian," I repeated her name as I shook her by the shoulders, but she was limp as a ragdoll. I was becoming horrified, breaking out into a nervous sweat. This wasn`t battle, this wasn`t something that I could fight my way out of. I needed to find a way to wake the girl up.

I had no one to blame but myself for this. I should have never meddled in her subconscious this way. I was already taking a big enough risk messing with a conscience that was already chemically imbalanced.

I had lost her once, and now I was going to lose her again both because of my recklessness.

It took me a few moments to force myself to breathe, be calm. I went back to syncing my breaths to Jillian`s, slow and steady. I leaned my forehead to her crown, closing my eyes and waiting. I waited to feel the familiar sense of slipping, falling backwards into her subconscious and telling me I had gone through the sync successfully. It never came. I was being blocked from her, and the possibility that her brain had been damaged when I pulled the missing piece of my soul back was prominent among my other assumptions.

I heard the door to the Beckett`s loft open and shut as a pair of footsteps shuffled in. I listened as Elise kicked her shoes off and walked over to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. She would investigate when she realized that Jillian was not up yet. I didn`t have much time.

I had overcome the impossible before with my mother, and this was no different. I would find a way to get Jillian back. Should I succeed, memories or not, I would never interfere again.

I lowered my face down to her again, stopping myself from pressing my lips to hers. I pulled back, grimacing.

I had stolen enough from the girl already.

* * *

**XII—Lost At Sea, Pt. 1**

**Women & Men, we are the same, but love will always be a game.  
****A human vulnerability; Doesn`t mean that I am weak.**  


"That`s too bad about your fiancée."

I turned cold as I heard them enter the break room adjacent to the office lounge I was seated in. Jillian was laying in a hospital bed, hooked up to several monitors to keep her from wasting away as she remained asleep. It had been three days.

"Heh, yeah," The younger of the two men in the room didn`t sound too upset, which wasn`t surprising considering his lack of regard for the girl in the first place.

I pretended to be interested in the book I`d been reading, flipping to the next page as I overheard the nauseating words drip from uncivilized lips.

"Well look at it this way, kid, at least you won`t have to put up with her bitching. That should make up for all the work you`re going to have to do in bed now."

I felt every hair on my body stand straight as the two men erupted into laughter, as if they were a couple of school boys reveling in all of their self-aggrandizing glory.

I had to remind myself that if I were to murder Jillian`s fiancé, that I would be punished by Reikai authorities.

If they could find me.

"What are you gunna do if she doesn`t come out of it?" The other man asked. I was completely absorbed by the conversation, awaiting Daisuke`s reply to the older sales executive.

"Tough question…" I heard the chair at the table in the break room slide across the tile floor, followed by another chair. They had not expected anyone of importance to be hanging around the lounge, as sales were above the communications branch anyway. The entire department was completely stuck up and vile to the rest of the company.

"I suppose Elise will have to do!" They erupted into laughter again, and I scoffed. If they only knew that Elise was being courted by royalty, if that was what they were still calling it. Not only that, but Elise wasn`t the type to be carried away on impulses. She didn`t romanticize everything in the way her sister was prone to.

"That`s cold, Jinguuji," The other executive said. I felt my eyes lift to the ceiling in desperation for the shallow, pointless conversation to be over with, but they only droned on, minutes of my lunch hour ticking away.

"Jillian is the better of the two looks-wise, but to be honest, she`s completely nuts. She gets mad at me if I don`t bring my toothbrush when I spend the night."

"Oh, please,"

"No, she`s _actually_ thrown a fit over it. She told me to walk to the convenient store and buy one at _two in the morning_."

My shoulders lurched as I laughed silently. He was engaged to the girl, and he had already forgotten that Jillian was a stickler for cleanliness. That marriage would have never survived, and Elise wasn`t too fond of the boy after what I`d shared with her about his intentions for the older Beckett.

"Yeah, but did you get laid?"

There was a silent exchange that caused them to chuckle now at a more reasonable level, but I felt the cold hand of hatred tightening around my throat. Jealously was unbecoming, but this wasn`t just jealousy. There was rage, the desire to shut the two of them up for good in order to spare Jillian`s honor. Koenma had bent the rules for me before…

"She`ll pull out of it," Daisuke said, "She`s just having another episode."

Even though the words were harsh, I had been guilty of the same words in altered phrasing. This time, it wasn`t her fault. I frowned now, something else quelling the rage that had been sinking inside of me, an anchor lowered to the depth of the sea, weighing on me. A form of desperation, sadness.

I had spent the past few days conflicted, unsure of the best way to go about asking Koenma what could be done for her. I had turned into a coward, afraid that there may be no chance for Jillian. I couldn`t bear to hear those words.

I had gotten little done in Kazuya`s branch, the communications office. Taking phone calls and booking meetings for my step father on autopilot, working a little slower paced than I was used to. I felt on the brink of insanity, pushing myself away from my desk about an hour before my shift should have ended, making my way down to the first floor and out the revolving door without a second thought. I had not taken advantage of working under Hatanaka yet, I wouldn`t be punished too severely.

"_Minamino!_"

I was halfway down the block when Elise`s sharp tone cut into my ears, causing me to stiffen among the crowds that were only the beginning of the after-work commute. I stopped, looking around for the girl who could not be seen buried among a group of men passing by. Perhaps my conscious was finally getting to me, and I was hallucinating.

I turned back, a tad bit startled to find the girl standing before me, eyes blazing up at me with hatred. I was used to Elise being cross with me for various personal reasons, however, this was a completely different look that was twisting her brow. It was mean, vengeful.

"I _know_ it was _you_." She accused, with good reason. I relaxed my muscles, remaining calm, though it was likely that the girl had been given clearance to eliminate me. Of course, if I were to make an attack on her, I would be damned for eternity by Koenma himself.

"You should have stayed away, I had everything under control until you had to step in. You fucked up, Kurama."

"You`ve come to arrest me, then?" I asked, straight-toned. I had almost been waiting for this moment to arrive, a little surprised it took her more than a day to get the prince`s authorization.

"Koenma would like a word, _unfortunately_ I haven`t been given the confirmation to murder you," Elise`s voice was lowered, trying to avoid the judgmental eyes of strangers on the walk that had heard her swearing up at me.

"I do not hold you accountable for feeling that way," I said, "I`ll come quietly, if that`s what you`d like."

"I`d like to beat your pretty face in, but I don`t have time." She glanced at the watch on her wrist, I recognized that it belonged to Jillian.

"There`s a breach in the barrier around the next corner."

"You`re excused, Elise,"

Elise had escorted me all the way to the front of Koenma`s desk, giving her prince a disdained look as he said this. She was upset that she wouldn`t be able to witness him reprimand me. Koenma chose his fights with the girl very carefully, refusing to budge on very little. It could only be assumed that he excused her due to her emotional involvement in this case.

The door slammed behind her, echoing throughout the room as the toddler sat, without making eye contact. He stared down at his empty desk for a moment, thinking over his words.

"I know you must have suffered greatly for what I`ve done," He started, surprising me greatly. I couldn`t allow these words to reach my core, and I let them roll off me like drops of water.

"I know you didn`t call me here for sympathy," I replied, "What is my punishment?"

"No, I didn`t call you here for sympathy. I called you here to apologize."

These words did not comfort me either, as I knew there would be a punishment. Something to make the prince`s grip tighten on me, more control, more errands for him to run when he had an entire staff devoted to such things.

"I should have never meddled in your affair," He continued to stare at the desk, unable to look me in the eye,

"We are beings that do not typically encounter affectionate feelings towards others, humans especially... I had no right to take that from you."

"I would hardly say that you and I are similar when it comes to affection." I narrowed my stare,

"After all, I am notorious for being cold blooded. For all you know, I could have purposefully lured Jillian into a coma out of vengeance." I lied, "What I did was for my own personal gain, not hers. I can assure you that much."

Though shallow and cruel, the latter was honest. I had sacrificed her own well being for my desire to remain the bane the girl`s existence. The power struggle between Jillian I was never ending. These foolish, selfish choices would be the end of the both of us.

"I`ll admit to entertaining that idea, Kurama," The toddler ruler, unusually ahead of his game for once explained, "However, you would not have been digging for information in the classifieds section if that were the case. You still want to help her. _You_ still care."

"How perceptive." I scoffed, this time, removing my gaze from him as he lifted his eyes to meet mine. I inhaled through clenched teeth, realizing that I had been steadily growing tense throughout the conversation.

"Yes, however, I regret to inform you that… There is nothing that you can do, besides wait. Jillian has to overcome the mental barricade that has been created in her subconscious."

"…Her disorder is what caused this?"

"Essentially… yes, due to the chemical imbalance, she was already at risk when you began tapping into that grey area of her mind. I`m no doctor, but I do know that …It took a complex form of brain damage to eliminate the memories, and the stress behind the memories that had been brought back with your help were brought with them, forcing the imbalance to react negatively. But that isn`t specifically what triggered the incident, was it?"

"No, it wasn`t," I shook my head, "It almost happened before, when we were inside of another memory. She hadn`t overreacted or done anything that would have caused the memory to slip, but it… happened, and, a piece of my soul, Kurama to be specific, was left behind." My body was shaking, unable to control the self hated and rage on a physical level,

"When I went to pull him back, I lost my grip over the situation, and now, well,"

"I see," He mused, "The stress you put on her caused a sensory overload, forcing her to shut down."

"Yes," I frowned. There had to be some way to get through to her from the other side. If I couldn`t, maybe someone else was capable…

"I won`t punish you immediately, as it is still being debated whether you are part human or not, which would make all of the difference in this case. That is why you`re protected."

Part of a human soul, just as brain dead as Jillian had been, was the soul reason why I was spared. Of course, if I had yet to fully understand what I was, then the Reikai would take their sweet time in deciding the verdict as well. My flesh was that of a demon, the only thing Shuichi Minamino held onto was the piece of his soul that lived like the proverbial, dying ember that refused to completely burn out. He was stranded, lost at sea in an empire of knowledge that I had built around him. I could not contact him, nor could he reach out to me. Nineteen years had changed nothing along the lines of communication. I knew of him, and he of me, but neither had directly crossed. There were memories, but nothing specific of the few days I had spent outside of my body. I knew Shuichi had taken over, but the details were hazy. He`d had enough understanding to get us this far without my help.

Sometimes I believed he was the only reason my heart had remained when my flesh had become fully demonic. There was no need for the organ, yet it remained beating, forcing my blood throughout the body in a mechanical way, less fluid than it had before.

I didn`t mind it, though at times it would throw me off. The beating of fluttering of the rhythm in my chest used to irritate me greatly, as I could hear it quite clear when I craved complete silence. I could not escape it, and it only became louder when I covered my ears.

I left the office, meeting my eyes to the hard, blue ones that had been waiting impatiently for me to make my leave. It was certain that the girl did not appreciate that I hadn`t yet been restricted.

"I want you to know," Her words dredged out, cold and unforgiving, "When the court finally makes a decision on your case, I will ensure your suffering."

"Naturally," I replied, letting the door fall shut behind me, "But until then, you keep in mind that Koenma does not make every decision."

"And why do you feel the need to remind me of that?" She spat, sounding like Jillian herself when provoked. It was hard to look at Elise, as they bore similar characteristics.

"Because ugly manners are not becoming of young ladies." I repressed the laughter in my throat at my own stab at Elise`s pride. I heard her snort before she yanked the door to the office open, disappearing inside without another word. I was beginning to wonder which girl was harder to handle. Elise held firm to her pigheaded decisions, cutting off her own nose to spite her face. At least Jillian was as easy manipulated as she was manipulative.

But look where that got her.

* * *

"Jill, dear,"

I felt Shiori`s warm hand on my back as I was curled up under the comforter, basking in the afternoon sun.

"You`ve been sleeping all day. Won`t you come downstairs for a while?"

I quickly became irritated that the woman had invaded in on my nap, and without thinking, opened my mouth and let the words fall out of my mouth,

"I`d rather die."

Shiori was silent for a moment, drawing her hand back. I knew better than to use that type of language around the woman, what with the way her previous husband had died. But I wasn`t a good person, and I did not care much for the feelings of anyone but myself.

"You really shouldn`t joke about that, Jillian," Her voice didn`t hint at the frustration and hurt that I knew she must have been feeling,

"Have you been taking your medicine?" She lowered her voice when she asked this, as if even inside of her own home, it needed to be kept a secret. My mind skipped over all reason and jumped to the assumption that Shiori was embarrassed of my behavior for me when I wasn`t.

"If I hadn`t, I`m sure I would have killed myself already." I answered her question as hatefully as I could from under the thick bedding.

Shiori waited for a few moments before trying one last time to get me to come around,

"Shuichi is going into town in a little while, would you like to go with him?" She offered, and I bristled, knowing that Shuichi would not have approved of his mother making me such an offer.

"I can`t think of anything worse."

Shiori let out a sigh, giving me another light pat as she stood from my bedside. She blamed herself, though she had made a better effort than anyone else could have. I hated that this was a real memory. At least I was left alone with my thoughts again, relieved that I would not have to worry about the opinions of a demon floating around inside of my head as I relived the good, bad and ugly.

"I`ll let you sleep, then," She sounded defeated, as if she had failed as a mother. But she wasn`t my mother, and at the age of fifteen, I did not mind one bit reminding her that she was not my mother, nor did I need a mother figure in my life.

After the woman had shut the door and wandered back downstairs without uttering a curse to my name, I felt the guilt wash over me. I had not felt it originally on that day, and the feeling came as a phantom. I was used to feeling numb but knowing of such emotions, having dealt with that side effect of the medicine for years now.

The guilt came as a phantom. I knew I was guilty, bad for how I`d behaved. This translated to my warped, fifteen year old mentality that I needed to be punished for not feeling a thing. I needed to feel bad, but the medicine did not let me.

So in order to justify my feelings, I managed to crawl out of bed with the comforter still wrapped around me, seating myself at the vanity.

Inside the bottom, right drawer, underneath the piece of cloth I`d laid down to cover the bottom of the wooden drawer, laid a replacement x acto knife blade. I didn`t have a need to own an actual knife, and my original razor had been confiscated long ago. I had to settle for something I could easily find in a craft store to make due when I needed to punish myself.

I rolled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt, pushing it up to my upper arm to expose the inside crease of my elbow, where I usually made my mark. This way, I could wear three-quarter length sleeves and get by without sending Shiori or my father going into a panic.

I don`t want to remember this, I reminded myself,

Anything but this.


	13. Lost At Sea, Pt 2

"I wish Genkai were here." Koenma looked over to Elise, seated at Jillian`s bedside in the hospital, "She would know something, wouldn`t she? Is there no way to contact her."

"We should let Genkai rest." He extinguished any hope Elise had for that option. It wouldn`t be right to bother her soul over something like this. Especially because of the petty reasons Jill had the boy erased from her in the first place. It was unlikely she would help Jillian out of her well deserved coma.

"I shouldn`t have let her do it," Koenma watched from across the room as Elise kicked herself over the situation that was completely out of her control. It had been from the start.

"She made the decision on her own, Ume," The grown ruler turned to the window of the hospital room. Standing below was a familiar boy, looking up and directly at him. Yusuke Urameshi, with Keiko Yukimura at his side. In her arms were a bouquet of flowers. Yusuke leered protectively over her, his stance tense. They disappeared into the hospital entrance. It would only be a few minutes before they would make it to the room.

"Yusuke and Keiko are on their way up." Koenma turned back to look at the younger Beckett, but she had disappeared out of the room in the tiny moment that he had diverted his attention.

"Ume?"

**XIII—Lost At Sea Pt. 2  
****Underneath the surface, the absence is threatening,  
just behind the curtain something is happening.**  


The smell of ink and paper filled my nose upon entering the quaint, corner bookstore located in the shopping district downtown. Shuichi disappears, distancing himself from me as soon as possible. He was looking for some text book over some ungodly subject, like the Italian Renaissance. I had tagged along because there was nothing better to do. I remembered this day vividly, every image perfect in my mind.

I skimmed the categories as I idly strolled down the shelves, until stopping upon the psychology section. Staring me in the face was the section on personality disorders.

I felt the lump crawling up my throat, worried about what information had been printed on the pages inside the books. The curiosity had gotten the best of me, though I knew I shouldn`t have attempted to read any.

I reached for a book titled, _Families Dealing with BPD_. Even the title felt insulting to me. Dealing. The word 'dealing' was so insulting, pointing out that having a family member with the disease was such a misfortune. I couldn`t even open the book as I stewed over the title of the book. Dealing with BPD. What about me? Wasn`t I the one that was suffering? Who gave a fuck about the family. They had no clue what I felt on a daily basis. My thoughts lingered on the option of ripping every single page from the spine and spitting on the pages after trashing them to the floor.

I flipped it open somewhere in the first chapter, eyes catching the most offensive words almost immediately.

'_Although the person with BPD may have many obvious strengths such as intelligence, ambition, good looks, and artistic talent, she onetheless is __**handicapped**__ by severe emotional vulnerabilities as she sets about making use of those talents_.'

I remember what I`d been going through while reading that sentence. Something along the lines of…

_Wow, I have so much to offer the world except no one will ever know because I`m mentally ill. _

I flipped the page, skipping to another section that offended me equally as much, if not more than the previous one had.

"_Lower your expectations. Set realistic goals that are attainable. Solve big problems in small steps. Work on one thing at a time__."_

I felt degraded. People were supposed to expect less of me. They expected me to throw a wrench in their lives. I braced myself for the embarrassing memory that was about to come, feeling tears brimming in my eyes, a common occurrence of my youth. These were tears of frustration, self loathing. I didn`t want anything to do with this disease any more. I had never thought I was this big of a pain.

"_We have all had moments in which we feel rage towards the people we love. We typically calm ourselves in such situations by devising a plan for having a heart-to-heart talk with the family member or by deciding to let things blow over. The person with BPD again feels such rage in its full intensity and without being able to soothe himself through the use of coping strategies. It results in an inappropriate expression of hostility or by acting out of feelings (drinking or cutting)._"

"There you are," I looked up from the book I had my nose pressed to, seeing Shuichi staring at me with mild curiosity.

"What`s that you`re reading?" He asked as I turned away from him, offering my shoulder instead of an answer. He was silent for a moment, looking over to the shelf I was hovering next to.

"Jillian, you probably shouldn`t be reading those,"

I didn`t answer him, just kept reading further, unable to put the book down and protect myself from the secrets that everyone kept from me about this god damn illness.

"_She only feels soothed and cared for by the other person when that person is present. Thus, the other person's absence is experienced as abandonment. She may even keep these painful thoughts and feelings out of mind by using a defense mechanism called dissociation. This consists of a bizarre and disturbing feeling of being unreal or separate from one's body."_

I felt warm saltwater slip away down the side of my face. Oh, God, that`s just insane. Did I behave this way?

"Jill,"

I felt myself let go of the breath I`d been holding in, letting it shakily escape my lips. The boy`s hand gripped my shoulder, causing me to shudder violently. I grit my teeth as I yanked it out of his grasp,

"_Do not tolerate abusive treatment such as tantrums, threats, hitting and spitting. Walk away and return to discuss the issue later.__ Frank tantrums are not tolerable. There is a range of ways to set limits on them. A mild gesture would be to walk out of the room to avoid rewarding the tantrum with attention."_

I was abusive? How? And the attention was supposed to be a reward? Was I really just looking for attention every time I was feeling overwhelmed by emotions?

Shuichi spoke my name again, and I turned back to him, biting the quivering down so that it wouldn`t show through in my voice,

"Am I abusive?" I asked, praying that he would just tell me anything to make me feel better, though I knew he wouldn`t. As if Shuichi would ever pass up an opportunity to fuck with me relentlessly as I had done to him.  
I suppose that previous thought answered the question I had originally asked him.

He reached out and tried to grab the book from my hands, and I almost felt the cover tear as I tightened my fingers around whatever I could grasp at, pulling it back from him, damaged.

Green eyes watched me with caution, afraid of the scene that I was about to cause. Would he let me read the book and continue to spiral into a melt down without his help or drag me kicking and screaming from the store.

Either way, he was bound to be embarrassed, but he didn`t know that. Unfortunately, I had to relive this memory and all of the embarrassment for the both of us.

I ducked into another aisle, sitting on the thin carpet, criss-cross applesauce, teary eyes glued to the page the whole time.

"_When speaking with a BP, especially about sensitive issues, remember emotion is likely to be so strong that neither of you can do high-level thinking. Make each sentence short, simple, and direct_."

I felt my breath catch, my old thoughts echoing back to me as I was forced into autopilot as the emotions took a nose dive straight into the shitter.

_They`re supposed to dumb down their words so that I can understand, like I`m some kind of idiot._

My sight was completely compromised as I felt my nose begin to run from how hard I`d been crying. A shadow was cast over me as I put the book down on the floor and curled up into a ball of tears in the middle of the science fiction section.

Shuichi leaned down, picking the book up off the floor.

"You`ve done a number on this one." He murmured as he looked it over. I looked up at him, wiping my face with the back of my hand. I couldn`t help but narrow my eyes up at him,

"That`s all you have to say?" I choked out, rolling my eyes before wiping at them once more, "Don`t worry, I`m buying it anyway."

"I don`t think that`s a good idea," He countered, "It`s obviously not doing anything to help."

"Neither are you." I glared at the hand he had extended down to help me to my feet, and then looked the other way, shoving my nose as high into the air as possible before standing on my own.

Shuichi looked over the book as I sniveled miserably, trying to fish the compact mirror out of my bag to fix the mascara that had run down my face.

"This isn`t meant for your eyes, anyway," He said, tucking it under his arm along with the text book he was planning on taking home as well.

"Oh, like it`s a big fucking secret. That`s why it`s just sitting on the shelf."

"Come on. The magazines are next to the registers."

The way that he sounded while speaking to me had pissed me off, as if he`d read the book cover to cover already.

"I don`t want to read a magazine," I spat as I followed the red head through the aisles of books to the register,

"Then don`t."

"Give me the book, Shuichi."

"Nah."

I struggled to keep up with his stride, taking almost two steps for every one of his. I wouldn`t accept the way he brushed me off, not this time. I went to swipe at the book in his hand, but he dodged my grasp every time, as if there were eyes in the back of his head.

I remembered feeling so inadequate. I didn`t want to feel like Shuichi had to watch over me so carefully just to make sure I didn`t get my feelings hurt. That he got to decide what kind of books I read or movies I watched. I thought that he was only concerned with having to put up with my emotions making a scene. I never once figured it was because he didn`t like seeing me upset. And that was the reason I wanted to act out when I was around him, make a scene. I wanted to embarrass the boy just to get him back. Because I thought that was what he was trying to avoid. Attention.

I hung back next to the magazine racks while he paid for his text book and the book I`d torn in all of the commotion, pouting while idly flipping through pages of the latest fashions, not really paying much attention. It wasn`t as if I had never seen a plaid shirt before. Grunge was becoming too popular for my liking. Why was it becoming cute to look sloppy?

I turned the page and felt vomit rise up in my throat as I looked down at a pair of platform Chuck Taylor`s. I set the latest _Glamour _back on the shelf as Shuichi approached the shelf I was standing in front of, looking for another magazine to flip through just so that I could waste his time and make him wait.

"I can`t believe you bought that book." I reached for Vogue and flipped to the section they were advertising on the cover about various styles of denim jackets, finding nothing new or interesting since the last article I`d read on denim in the previous issue. Or was that in Harper`s Bazaar?

"It could prove useful. Who knows." Was his reply, "Were you going to get a magazine?" He tried to distract me from the previous statement he`d made. I could feel my upper lip curving into a snarl, still thinking over what he`d said.

"Let`s go," I held myself back from insulting him as I originally had. At the least, I could refrain from adding to the hostile feelings that were making my stomach churn. I didn`t like being mean to Shuichi, really. Not after everything we`d been through already. Not after I`d fucked him over like I had.

I knew that at this point, he wasn`t aware of our futures, but it still didn`t feel right to me. I lead him out of the bookstore without another word or insult. Of course, now he was bound to jump to the conclusion that I was upset.

He didn`t ask, however. I found it strange he didn`t concern himself with my feelings, but then I realized that he didn`t really start to care for my frantic nerves until after winter break. He really was content with my silence.

It was going to be hard for me either way. No matter how I approached these memories, I would always end up becoming upset. We`d originally exchanged petty insults the entire walk back to his house, causing me to become upset over that stupid book. This time, no words were shared and my own thoughts were enough to cause my vision to blur.

I picked up my pace, trying to make it home as soon as possible so that I could lock myself in the guest room and throw my fit in private. He waited until we turned onto our block before speaking up and breaking the silence,

"You`ve been acting strangely."

I froze on the sidewalk. He`d caught on. How was I going to worm my way out of this one.

"Not as strange as you." I tried to morph my way back into how I used to be, before I was pathetically in love with the boy. It was hard getting back into that chapter of my life. It was like I couldn`t remember how to be mean to him anymore.

"That was pretty weak, Jillian," He pointed out, catching up to my side, matching his stride to mine. I was sure that it wasn`t hard, his legs were much longer than mine. I looked down at the bag he was holding as we were walking, I wondered whether or not he actually read the book. I didn`t think he would have bothered.

He probably left it sitting somewhere in the bottom desk drawer. He`d probably forgotten its existence. I guessed that I preferred things that way. It wasn`t as if he already knew what it was that made me tick. And I he didn`t then, he would soon find out.

"Okay." I replied, not taking the bait he`d offered. I kicked myself for tipping him off even further. Oh well, I was never the predictable type anyway. He`d have to get over it.

My thoughts drifted to the outside world. Where was Shuichi, anyway? He`d been silent all this time. He`d been silent since he took back the piece of his soul that had stayed behind. I panicked, jumping to the conclusion that I`d been lost. How long had I been in the dreaming state anyway?

Everytime I went to bed, I opened my eyes to the very next day. It had been a week since I`d been placed back in my freshman year at Meiou. About seven long days. I wondered if time was moving at the same pace on the outside. Had I been sleeping for seven days?

"Jillian?"

Was I unable to wake up?

"Jill?"

I jerked my shoulder out from the hand that had gripped it, and turned to see Shuichi standing behind me, brows knit together in what could be recognized as the concern I was certain that he lacked at that moment in our past. In the other hand was the magazine I`d been flipping through at the store.

"Did you… did you steal that?"

The red head only nodded once in reply,

"You weren`t done looking at it."

I thought back to all the inside jokes I used to make with Shizuru during the Dark Tournament. Every time something unexpected were to happen or if we made up scenarios, we would say the words, "Plot Twist"

Plot Twist, Momma`s Boy was a total kleptomaniac. Not surprising, really. An infamous thief would thieve. Stealing a magazine was only a misdemeanor. Nothing at all, really. It wasn`t as if neither of us could afford the magazine. He`d taken it just because he could. I snatched May`s addition of _Vogue _from his hand and gaped. I knew he was a thief, yet this surprised me.

"Why?"

"It`s like I said,"

"No. I know," I interrupted, "Don`t do that. Jesus. What if someone had seen you?"

The fact that our roles had just been reversed was slightly amusing. It was my turn to reprimand Shuichi for his behavior. Something I thought I would never live to see. The corner of his mouth twitched up, but I knew he wouldn`t tell me the truth. I wanted call him out so badly, let him know about all the secret aspects of his life that I knew about just to fuck with him.

Of course, that would make him incredibly suspicious of me. Did I feel up to dealing with the interrogation process?

"You think you`re hot shit because you stole a mag," I rolled my eyes, continuing my way down the street,

"You must think you`re really cool."

"You mean to tell me you don`t think I`m really cool?" He managed to keep pace with me as we approached the quaint, suburban home.

"No, I don`t," I couldn`t help but laugh, "You`re years behind in the misdemeanor crimes, Shu," I bragged, "I was stealing magazines and nail polish in sixth grade. Get on my level already."

This of course, was a lie. I had never needed to steal anything. I was merely trying to press his buttons.

"Alright then." I didn`t realize that his tone was going to lead to a completely unexpected series of events for that day. I wished that I hadn`t opened my mouth as soon as his hand curled around my arm. He began leading me back down the street in the direction we`d came.

"What? Shu, where are we going?"

"The pharmacy."

I didn`t get it.

"What, are you on crazy pills now too?" He didn`t answer, just eventually dropped his arm back to his side as I followed him down the walk. I was curious now, wondering what was going through his head.

"No."

"Just tell me what we`re doing." I gave up, demanding an answer. I was never much good at guessing games. They only frustrated me anyway.

He threw an amused look over his shoulder at me, a glint in his eye.

"Getting on your level."


End file.
